When Rubber Came: The Negeri Sembilan Experience · When Rubber Came: The Negeri Sembilan...

Southeast Ast'an Studt'es, Vol. 29, No.2, September 1991

When Rubber Came: The Negeri Sembilan Experience

Tsuyoshi KATO*

Introduction

Gullick, a noted Malaysianist, once

observed:

One picul of rubber was exported from

Negri Sembilan in 1902. This was an

event; it had never happened before.

[Gullick 1951: 38)1>

The first consignment of rubber from

N egeri Sembilan came from Linsum

Estate, located near the border of Seremban

and Port Dickson (Map 1). A few trees of

Hevea brasz"liensz's had been planted there

amongst the coffee in 1883, and a sample of

their latex was sent for evaluation to

Sungai Ujong, one of the major British

administrative centres in N egeri Sembilan,

in 1893 [Jackson 1968: 213, 215, 223].However, it was only in 1902 that the first

consignment of rubber was sent from the

Linsum Estate to England and sold for

a satisfactory profit. Thenceforth ensued

the successful expansion of rubber culti

vation in N egeri Sembilan.

The commercial cultivation of rubber,

not just In N egeri Sembilan but British

* 1JDli IMltl, The Center for Southeast AsianStudies, Kyoto University

1) Negri Sembilan is an old spelling of NegeriSembilan.

Malaya in general, was indeed an event.

There had been other cash crops, for

example, gambir and coffee, and other cash

generating enterprises such as tin-mining,

before the introduction of rubber. But

rubber decisively committed a large number

of Malay peasants in different parts of

Malaya to cash cropping and thus to

a money economy. Malay village life was

fundamentally affected by it.

The present paper will trace some of the

influences experienced by the Malay

peasantry through the expansion of rubber

cultivation. In order to do so I examine

the history of rubber cultivation in Negeri

Sembilan. The choice of Negeri Sembilan

for this inquiry is incidental; its results,

however, will hopefully be consequential in

their wider applicability to Peninsular

Malaysia.

There are good reasons for carrying out

the present investigation of rubber culti

vation. Unlike other cash crops which

preceded Hevea, rubber eventually spread

to various parts of Malaya. Moreover,

unlike other cash crops, rubber cultivation

turned out to be an enterprise of enduring

commitment, which has survived frequent

price fluctuations in the international rubber

market. Although oil palm has increased

in significance in recent years, rubber still

maintains an extremely important position

in the national as well as rural economy of

109

N

Melaka'(Malacca)

O~

Negerl Sembllan o 20 40 km

Map 1 Negeri Sembilan and Surrounding Areas (ca. 1988)

present-day Malaysia.

Malays were involved In rubber culti

vation almost from the beginning, although

the British colonial authorities did not

welcome this and sometimes even attempted

to discourage them. As Malay small

holdings multiplied throughout the 1910s

and 1920s, rubber cultivation began to

exert ramifying influences over various

aspects of Malay village life: land tenure,

settlement patterns, religious awareness,

110

material culture, rice cultivation, life styles

and work patterns. These are some of the

influences I will discuss in this paper.

The historical examination of Malay

smallholding provides valuable insights for

the understanding of contemporary rural

development in Malaysia. A significant

element of post-war development projects,

devised either by the colonial or Malaysian

governments, concerns the strengthening of

rubber smallholders, above all, Malay

T. KATO: When Rubber Came: The Negeri Sembilan Experience

smallholders. Concrete examples of this

are the Replanting Scheme (Rancangan

Tanam Semula), the FELDA (Federal

Land Development Authority) Scheme,

and the Fringe Area Alienation Scheme

(Rancangan Tanah Pinggir). These pro

jects are not implemented in a vacuum;

they are grafted onto the decades-long

history of rubber smallholding. The accu

mulated historical experience of smallhold

ing has affected the thought and behaviour

of the Malay peasantry. It is also bound

to affect the implementation and outcome

of development projects. The historical

examination of rubber smallholding IS

'\,:Jelebu~ ••,. l

\. •••'_•••--c........

"'1'" ; JempolSeremban l K I P'I h·-\··..,.. ) ua a I a ('

.... -. I./) /'I r' 1 ,J ••-._---,l\ "'-., ) ,/' ..It

Port Lr'i t. t"Dick;~n ,Rembaut·-----·

io 10 kilometers

Map 2 Administrative Districts and AdatDistricts (Luak) in Negeri Sembilan

Source: Peletz [1988: 17]; Nordin Selat [1976: V]

surely a prerequisite of our proper under

standing of Malaysia's contemporary rural

development.

Before going any further, let me briefly

describe my research methodology. The

present study comprises the second step in

my project to reconstruct a social history of

a luak or luhak [adat district] called Inas in

the District of Kuala Pilah, N egeri Sembilan

(Maps 1 and 2).2) In my previous writing

[Kato 1988], I described Malay village

life in Inas before the introduction of rubber.

In it I examined agricultural rituals

associated with rice cultivation and tried to

understand the cultural meaning of rice

cultivation, an economic activity of decisive

importance before rubber was introduced

into Malay villages in the late 1900s. The

present study begins where the previous

study ended, and covers the period up to the

early 1940s. 3)

I utilize four major sources of information

in the reconstruction of local social history.

2) Concerning my reasons for choosing Inas asa research site, refer to Kato [1988: 111-112].

3) There are at least four more studies plannedafter the present one. In a chronological order,the first one will deal with the Japanese occupation and the Emergency when the administrative reorganization and political transforma·tion of rural society proceeded from above.The second focuses on the 1960s when thepoliticians, at the expense of administrators,wielded increasingly stronger influence over thedecision-making processes of rural development.The third study concerns the last twenty yearswhen the industrialization, urbanization andpoliticization of Malaysian society in general,

under the New Economic Policy, has engulfedInas. Fourthly "Inas at the crossroads" willpull together different strands of observationand consider future prospects for the Malayvillage.

111

One is my field research conducted in Inas.

I spent the total of five months in Negeri

Sembilan between late 1986 and early 1989,

of which close to four months were spent in

Inas. While in Negeri Sembilan, I also

collected relevant data at various govern

ment offices at Kuala Pilah and Seremban.

In writing this paper, land registration

records at the Land Office of Kuala Pilah

proved to be very useful. In addition to

field work in Negeri Sembilan, I spent

about one month at the National Archives of

Malaysia, mainly reading Negri Sembilan

Administration Reports and Annual Re

ports of Kuala Pilah District from the

colonial period. The National Archives

unfortunately does not have complete sets of

these documents. Nevertheless, some of

the documents I could locate there were

useful for my present purposes. Finally,

I consulted various published materials on

Malay society and rubber cultivation in

Malaya.

Among the four sources, I mainly relied

on the latter three in writing this paper

which is primarily a general description of

the history of rubber cultivation in Negeri

Sembilan. The paper is organized ac

cording to the following topics:

I Negeri Sembilan in the Nineteenth

Century

II Chinese Cassava Estates

III British Colonial Rule and Land

Legislation

IV Establishment of Pekan (Market

Towns)

V Introduction of Cultivated Rubber

to Malaya

VI History of Rubber Smallholding in

112

Mukim Johol

VII Implications of Rubber Small-

holding

VIII Changes in Material Culture

IX Rice and Rubber

X Diminishing Forest and Agricul-

tural Rituals

As a concluding remark, the "Anatomy of

Malay Smallholding and Rubber Tapping"

is discussed.

I Negeri Sembilan in the NineteenthCentury

Situated relatively inland, the cultural

core areas of Negeri Sembilan, that is,

Jelebu, Rembau, Sungai Ujong, Johol, and

Sri Menanti, are seldom mentioned in

European writings before the nineteenth

century. Thus the following discussion

basically concerns conditions in N egeri

Sembilan in the nineteenth century, espe

cially in the latter half of the nineteenth

century.

Before the introduction of rubber, the

mainstay of the Malays of Negeri Sembilan

was rice cultivation. The quantity of rice

harvested largely determined the quality

of life enjoyed. Because of the long

maturation period of indigenous varieties of

rice, the Malays were involved in rice culti

vation, though admittedly not continuously,

for probably nine to ten months of the year

[Kato 1988: 128J. Various stages of rice

cultivation entailed agricultural rituals and

festive activities. The annual cycle of rice

cultivation accentuated a basic rhythm of

village life. Rice cultivation was central to

economic life, ritual life, and the belief


system of the Malay villagers.

Despite the overwhelming importance of

rice cultivation, it was not the only economic

pursuit in N egeri Sembilan in the nineteenth

century [Gullick 1951]. Vegetables were

planted in kampong (homesteads), and

edible plants were collected from around

sawah (wet-rice fields) and forest. The

extraction of forest products such as rattan,

honey, beeswax, gaharu (incense wood),

all sorts of forest rubber, and damar (resin)

was important because of their monetary

value. Fishing was carried out in the

sawah, ponds and rivers as fish were the

primary source of animal protein. The

raising of cattle and poultry was common,

for they were "live assets" which could be

multiplied or, if need be, exchanged for

money or other goods or even used to

generate prestige through their conspicuous

consumption at ceremonial occaSIOns.

Pottery-making, atap-making (making

thatch out of palm leaves) and mat-weaving

were also carried out but these products

were probably more for self-consumption

than for markets, at least until the early

nineteenth century. (On the other hand,

after the mid-nineteenth century, Malay

handicrafts had to compete against Chinese

handicrafts.) Some cash crops, such as

coffee and tobacco, began to be cultivated

towards the last quarter of the nineteenth

century. Tin-mining was practised in some

parts of N egeri Sembilan, for instance at

Sungai Ujong, Jelebu and Gemencheh but

was already being dominated by the Chinese

from around the middle of the nineteenth

century. Gold-mining was not so im

portant as tin-mining.

Despite this wide range of economIC

pursuits existing in Negeri Sembilan, the

general impression is that Malay village

life, relatively speaking, was still on the

periphery of the money economy in the

first half of the nineteenth century. As

late as 1890, Javanese who came to Jelebu

(a tin-producing yet admittedly remote area

in N egeri Sembilan) are said to have com

mented that "the people of Jelebu so long as

they have food are content." This implies

that the Malays of J elebu had not yet

developed new needs and wants normally

instigated by a money economy [Hill 1977 :

138].

The above situation began to change from

around the middle of the nineteenth century.

Thriving Malacca, which became a British

possession in 1824 and later functioned as

one of the major entry points for massive

Chinese immigration for tin-mining, was an

important factor in this development.

Malacca and the Chinese tin-mining areas

in inland N egeri Sembilan came to con

stitute enclaves of a strongly money

oriented economy In contrast to the

prevalence of village economies based

largely on self-sufficiency.

Some Malays In Negeri Sembilan

developed a steady involvement with the

money economy through their interaction

with these Chinese enclaves. In the 1830s

the people of Johol, Sri Menanti, and

Rembau were exporting surplus rice to

Malacca. Farm produce and livestock

were sold to the Chinese in tin-mines in

Sungai Ujong, Jelebu, Malacca, and later

Kuala Lumpur. Malacca Chinese came

to the Kuala Pilah area to buy fruit in the

113

1880s. Some Malays squatted near

Chinese tin-mines in the 1880s. Women

. re-panned and re-washed refuse heaps of

sand for tin which Chinese miners had

already panned and washed, while men did

odd jobs around the mines such as building

sheds [Hill 1977: 126, 137; Winstedt 1950:

124; Rathborne 1984: 132-133,309,319].

The involvement of the Malay peasantry

in the money economy was given a further

impetus in the last quarter of the nineteenth

century. Two events were responsible for

this. One was the expansion of Chinese

cassava estates from Malacca to Negeri

Sembilan; the other, the consolidation of

British control over Negeri Sembilan in

1887. One underlying element in these

events was the restoration of "order" in

Negeri Sembilan. The advent of large

revenues for Malay rulers through tin

mining concessions and the influx of many

Chinese to the tin-mines caused frequent

feuds and much warfare among various

Malay leaders and also among rival Chinese

groups. The restoration of "order" by the

British in the last quarter of the nineteenth

century was conducive to the expansion of

cassava estates in practically all of Negeri

Sembilan.

Both events mentioned above were es

pecially important to Inas. Inas, being

geographically isolated from the major

riverine trade routes and having no nearby

tin-mines, had been little involved in the

money economy even after the mid

nineteenth century. However, this situ

ation began to change in the last quarter of

the century. As Inas is situated relatively

near Malacca, the expansion of the Chinese

114

cassava estates, with the concomitant

development of land transportation, proba

bly reached it by the latter half of the 1880s.

Concurrently, the establishment of British

control entailed the imposition of "house

taxes" in Inas, apparently from around 1888.

The implementation of the "house tax"

system presupposed a certain degree of diffu

sion of the money economy and simultane

ously predestined its further penetration.

II Chinese Cassava Estates

Cassava is significant as a cash crop as

it is a source of tapioca flour, flakes or

pearls. It is not clear why the demand for

tapioca increased in the nineteenth century.

There are two possible, though still con

jectural, reasons for this: the rising demand

for laundry starch in the British cotton

industry and/or for tapioca pudding in step

with the increasing consumption of coffee,

tea and sugar in Europe. In either case,

another important factor in making tapioca

a successful export product must have been

the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 and

the subsequent adoption of steamships for

the Asia-European sea route. The result

ing decline in transportation costs benefited,

for example, the export of sago, a bulk

commodity, from the Straits Settlements

to Europe [Latham 1978J; the same could

well apply to tapioca.

Cassava estates in Malaya were initiated

and subsequently controlled mainly by the

Chinese of Malacca. 4 ) The large-scale

4) The following account of the development ofcassava estates in Negeri Sembilan is based onJackson [1968: Chapter 4].


commercial cultivation of cassava began in

Malacca in the early 1850s. Its processed

product, tapioca, was mainly exported to

the British market. As lands in Malacca

became exhausted, the cultivation of

cassava eventually spread to neighbouring

Negeri Sembilan and, to some extent, to

Johor. But it never became significant in

other states of British Malaya.

Cassava estates were operated on a

system of shifting cultivation. This culti

vation method was extremely wasteful and

devastating to the soil. A cassava estate

concession might occupy an area from

1,500 to 5,000 acres. A lot ofland operated

at anyone time might range from 100 to

1,000 acres. Newly opened land was

cultivated for from three to five years,

during which time two or three crops of

cassava were harvested, with diminishing

monetary return. Then the lot was

abandoned and a new tract of forest in the

conceSSIOn was opened up. When the

concession was exhausted, a new one was

acquired. In processing cassava roots to

tapioca, large supplies of firewood were

required. This fact also accelerated the

speed of cultivation shifting and the de

nuding of forest. Thus, the cassava estates

steadily shifted towards the outer areas of

Malacca and, in due course, far beyond.

The expansion of cassava estates reached

a peak in Malacca in 1882, by which time

the frontier of cassava cultivation had

already advanced to the border areas be

tween Malacca and Negeri Sembilan.

Cassava cultivation in N egeri Sembilan

started in the latter half of the 1870s,

initially in the Sungai Ujong area. Later

on, in the early 1880s, before tapioca prices

plunged in 1882, it spread to Rembau, the

neighbouring area of Malacca and Sungai

Ujong. By the latter half of the 1880s,

particularly after tapioca prices began to

recover in 1886, cassava cultivation was

also well established in Tampin, J ohol,

and Gemencheh, with all conceSSlOns

situated near Malacca and along the

Malacca-Tampin-Kuala Pilah road. In

the meantime, Sungai Ujong ceased to be

important in the cultivation of this crop.

Cassava remained the single most

important cash crop in the present districts

of Rembau, Tampin and Kuala Pilah until

the end of the first decade of the twentieth

century. By that time much forest in the

areas was denuded, the colonial govern

ment's attitude toward cassava cultivation

became negative, and the gospel of a new

cash crop, rubber, was already on the

horizon.

Changes brought about by the spread of

cassava estates were manifold. Road

networks were opened, improved and

expanded in order to connect Malacca and

the areas of tapioca production. Cart

roads crisscrossed and checkered the

countryside, because cassava estates and

forests for firewood supplies had to be

connected by a road to the tapioca factories.

The latter were usually located near a river

as the processing of cassava roots required

water for washing. Bullock carts eventually

became ubiquitous as a means of trans

portation. Thus was initiated the "age of

land transportation" in N egeri Sembilan.

The incorporation of Negeri Sembilan in

the British sphere of influence in 1887

115

further encouraged the advance of land

transportation.

Another change wrought by the spread

of cassava estates was the closer level of

encounters between Malays and Chinese.

Malay villagers in general had relatively

limited associations with the Chinese when

the latter were mainly concentrated in the

tin-mines. Because of the shifting nature

of cassava cultivation, the estates, unlike

the encapsulated enclaves of Chinese tin

mines, spread to almost all corners of

Malacca and Negeri Sembilan. Tin-mines

were isolated dots on a map, while cassava

estates comprised a horizontal expansion.

Bustling activities associated with cassava

cultivation and processing were more visible

to the outsiders than tin-mining activities.

Tapioca factories were usually established

near water sources and at the same time

close to existing or newly-established road

systems. Bullock carts busied themselves

shuttling between the factories and cassava

estates.

The above characteristics of the tapioca

industry must have made the Chinese more

familiar figures in the countryside of Negeri

Sembilan than before. Closer encounters

between Malays and Chinese in rural Negeri

Sembilan are shown in the "racial incidents"

which were sometimes reported in official

documents towards the end of the nineteenth

century. Such incidents include "mar

riages" between Malay women and

Chinese men and alleged murders of

Chinese by Malays.S)

5) In the early 1890s the Kathi (Islamic official) ofJ ohol complained to the District Officer ofKuala Pilah that two Inas women and one Johol

116

Although Malays were not directly in

volved in the commercial cultivation of

cassava, many of them were hired as wage

labourers on the estates. They felled trees

at the initial stage of opening up the forest,

and, after the planted lot began yielding,

they dug cassava roots, loaded them onto

bullock carts and carried them to the

tapioca factory. This kind of arrangementwas common because it was not unusual for

estates and tapioca factories to be located

near Malay settlements or even in the

midst of them. 6) Thus cassava estates

provided Malays with relatively easy access

to a cash income.

In many ways, the expansion of the

woman had married Chinese men. In the opinion of the District Officer, the Malay womenwere probably concubines of the Chinese(NSSF 568/92). According to the journalfor January 1891 by the District Officer of KualaPilah, a Chinese was murdered in KampongNuri in the previous year and two Malays weresuspected of having committed the crime (NSSF174/91). The identification numbers in parentheses signify document numbers used forthe Negri Sembilan Secretariat Files at theNational Archives of Malaysia. All abbreviations for documents cited in this paper are listedin the Bibliography.

6) For example, there was a large cassava estate(the present Sungai Inas Estate) just to thesouth of Inas, and its factory was located inKampong Seginyeh, at the confluence of twosmall rivers flowing through Inas. Accordingto Inas residents who are in their seventies orabove, in their childhood some villagers stillworked on the cassava estate for wages. Beforethe 1920s the path connecting Inas to PekanJohol, a nearby market town, was through thecassava estate. Villagers sometimes encountered pigs raised by Chinese along the path tothe pekan (market). Cassava cultivation wasoften coupled with pig-rearing because pigscould be fed the refuse from tapioca processingUackson 1968: 55].


cassava estates and the resultant changes

foretold what Malay society in N egeri

Sembilan would later experience as rubber

cultivation expanded. For Malay peasants

it provided a foretaste of their society's

irrevocable transition from a subsistence

oriented economy to a money economy.

III British Colonial Rule and LandLegislation

Perak, Selangor and part of Negeri

Sembilan, that is, Sungai Ujong, came

under the sphere of British colonial rule in

1874. The rest of Negeri Sembilan fol

lowed in 1887, together with Pahang. These

four states (Perak, Selangor, Negeri

Sembilan and Pahang) were to become the

Federated Malay States (FMS) in 1896.

The establishment of colonial rule brought

about many changes in the Malay society

of Negeri Sembilan, especially concerning

land. The British began registering land

for revenue purposes. The first state-wide

land registers in N egeri Sembilan are called

the Malay Grants. The Land Office of

Kuala Pilah still preserves the district's

Malay Grants in its office. I was fortu

nately able to examine the grants of Mukim

Johol in which Inas is located. Altogether

there are nine books of Malay Grants for

this mukim (subdistrict), containing some

eight hundred entries. The first entry in

the first book is dated November 17th,

1887 and the last entry in the last book

October 25th, 1896.

As far as I can ascertain from the case of

Mukim Johol, the Malay Grants are

considerably different in character from the

Mukim Register, which eventually replaced

the Malay Grants. The Grants are written

in Jawi (Arabic letters), and entries are

made according to household, not according

to land lot. Thus one usually sees both

sawah and kampong (homestead) registered

under one entry. No specification of land

size is made. 7 ) No land other than sawah

and kampong is registered in the Malay

Grants, which suggests a rather narrow

range of land utilization patterns among

the Malays of this period. Orchards

(dusun) , for example, might have existed

then but they were probably not yet so

economically important, at least not

important enough to be considered for tax

purposes.

It is clear that the objective of the British

in compiling the Malay Grants was to tax

households rather than land lots. They

7) Sawah and kampong in the Malay Grants werelater to be classified in the Mukim Register as"customary land" or land regulated accordingto matrilineal ada! (a body of social etiquettes,customs and tradition). However, some entriesfor these lands were made under male namesin the Malay Grants, which may suggest "confusion" in the translation of matrilineal adatinto the Malay Grants. (Dnfortunately Ifailed to check the relationship between these"land-possessing" males and the women underwhose names the lands were eventually to beregistered in the" Mukim Register. Althoughit is probably impossible to check this, it wouldbe valuable to ascertain whether the men werehusbands or maternal uncles to the landinheriting women. The importance of thisdistinction was suggested to me by MichaelPeletz. Also see Peletz [1988: 137-138].)I observed no similar confusion in the M ukimRegister. Jinjang was sometimes used asa measurement of sawah in the Malay Grants.It refers only to the width of the "head" ofsawah and does not specify its size.

117

probably started collecting "house tax"

around 1888. A letter from the Super

intendant of Police at Kuala Pilah, dated

January 4th of 1888, addressed to the

Colonial Secretary, reports that Datuk

Penghulu Inas (adat chief of Inas) , after

some negotiations, finally agreed to collect

"house tax," that is, one dollar per house,

for the British: "He [Datuk Penghulu

Inas] has now accepted his allowances tho'

he has asked for certain small additions &

he & his chiefs have also agreed to the

collection of the House tax in Inas."

Initial negotiations between the two sides

took place in April of 1887. The final

agreement stipulated that the number of

adat leaders in Inas who were to receive

monthly allowances from the British would

be increased from nine to seventeen. 8)

Over and above the lengthy negotiations

required and other difficulties they must

have encountered, the British, from the

beginning, were evidently not happy with

the house tax. At the first meeting of the

Negri Sembilan State Council, held on

December 9th of 1889, they already

proposed an alternative to the house tax:

the flat rate of one dollar per "holding"

was to be replaced with a five-percent tax

on the average padi yield of sawah under

cultivation (NS AR 1889, pp. 3-4).

Gullick [1951: 42] writes: "During the

1890's the tax was changed to an assessment

upon the profitability of the land (50/0 of

the annual crop of padi instead of $1 per

8) See File "K.P. 9/88" in the Files "Super"intendant of Police, Kuala Pilah, NegriSembilan 1887-1888" at the National Archivesof Malaysia.

118

acre) and it was collected by District

Officers." However, I could find no indi

cation that the proposed new tax was actu

ally implemented in Mukim J ohol. 9)

I t is often stated that land possessed no

monetary value before the establishment of

British colonial rule in Malaya. Swetten

ham, who had long experience in British

Malaya, observes: "Land had no value in

the Malay States of 1874 and it was the

custom for anyone to settle where he

pleased on unoccupied and unclaimed

land" (quoted by Gullick [1958: 113, n. 2]).

Judging from the way the Malay Grants

were organized, apparently the British did

not yet anticipate the commoditization of

Malay smallholdings when they started

compiling the Malay Grants in 1887. The

9) In Mukim J ohol one dollar per "holding" wasevidently still being collected through lembaga(matri-clan heads) in 1893. In a documentdated March 16th of 1893 were listed 164 housesunder seven lembaga in Inas, 432 houses undernine lembaga in Johol, and 213 houses undersix lembaga in Gemencheh, with annual allowances totalling $648 for 22 lembaga inMukim Johol (NSSF 380/93). The documentis titled "List of holdings under the jurisdictionof each Lembagas of Inas and Johol." It liststhe names of lembaga in Inas, Johol, andGemencheh, the number of "rumah" (house)under their jurisdiction, and the amount oftheir monthly allowances. It is clear that"holding" here means house or household, notland holding. (Note that in the above quotation Gullick seems to equate house tax with$1 tax per one acre holding.) Likewise, thefinal entry in the final book of the Malay Grantsof Mukim Johol, registered on October 25th1896, still shows an entry "cukai [tax] $1.00"in red ink on its backpage, indicating that thehouse tax was still being levied on that date.Malay Grants contain no information (forinstance, sawah size) which could be used forthe implementation of the newly proposed taxsystem.

T. KATO: When Rubber Came: The Negeri SembiIan Experience

Malay Grants for Mukim J ohol are listed in

books of two different sizes: one with the

lengths of 30 em by 19 em and the other

with the lengths of 22 em by 15 em. In

formation was filled on one page per

holding/house with its backpage blank.

Each page contains the following informa

tion: name [of the head of the holding],

tribe (or clan name of the holding head),

lembaga [of the holding head], number of

persons [in the holding], nature of culti

vation (that is, sawah and/or kampong),

and date [of registration]. The page size

of the Malay Grants allows no room for

writing any other information, for instance,

on subsequent land transactions. In ad

dition to this size limitation, the fact that

entries in the book were made according to

a house, not according to a lot, without

specifying land size, meant that the Malay

Grants would not be useful once the

commoditization process of Malay small

holdings unfolded.

In establishing and extending control in

Malaya from the 1870s to the 1890s, it

became imperative for the British to devise

a relatively uniform system of land legis

lation in the western Malay States which

would allow the expansion of British and

other European-managed estates. We

should note here that these were the

decades when European interests In

plantation agriculture, for example, sugar

and coffee, were growing in Malaya

[Jackson 1968: Part II]. The person who

most influenced the drafting of this legis

lation was William Maxwell.

In 1882, Maxwell, a British official

familiar with Malay systems of land tenure,

was sent to Australia to study the Torrens

System of Registration of Title. The

Torrens System was initially introduced in

South Australia in the 1850s. Kratoska

[1985: 25] succinctly summarizes its charac

teristics: "The Torrens System, which

employs title by registration rather than

title by deed, is based on land registers

maintained by the government. All alien

ated land is entered in the registers, and

these entries are the land titles; to be

legally binding, mortgages, leases, and

transmissions of title must also be entered in

the register."

Maxwell was appointed as the Resident

of Selangor in 1889. He drafted the

Selangor Land Enactment of 1891, basing

it on the Torrens System. This law laid

the foundation for land enactments which

were passed, without much variation, in

each of the Federated Malay States in 1897;

it was later repealed and reenacted with

revisions in 1903. In the 1897 enactments,

tenure of smallholdings came to be referred

to as tenure by entry in the Mukim Register

[ibid.: 24-26; Allen and Donnithorne 1954:

115J. This comprised the first tangible

step toward the replacement of the Malay

Grants with the Mukim Register. In

Negeri Sembilan, the initial registration

and survey of land for the implementation

of the enactment continued until 1904

[Gullick 1951: 42].

I examined the Mukim Register of

Mukim J ohol in the Land Office of Kuala

Pilah. There are altogether 33 books in the

Register for this mukim. The first entry of

the first book is dated June 23rd of 1903.

Reflecting the purpose of the Mukim

119

Register, the books are designed to record

all land transactions revolving around the

entry of a particular lot. Thus the book

size of the Mukim Register is considerably

larger than that of the Malay Grants, with

dimensions of 49 em by 30 em. Moreover,

two open pages are used for one entry.

The Mukim Register concerns small

holdings of less than ten acres. They

'record the holdings of Malays, Chinese and

Indians but most of the entries belong to

the Malays. Each entry in the Register

includes the following information: number

of the holding (or a sort of identification

number in the Mukim Register), survey

number, number and nature of former title

[if any], name of owner, area (that is, size),

boundaries, nature of cultivation (for

example, sawah, kampong or rubber) and

locality (that is, settlement or village name),

special conditions [of cultivation, such as

"no rubber"], subsequent proceedings (date

of issuance of extract and so on), [amount

of] annual rent, and remarks (such as

"customary land").

I t is interesting to note that initially two

facing pages of the Mukim Register

contained two entries, one occupying the

top half and the other the bottom half.

This changed in early 1905 when the whole

two pages were alloted to a single entry.

As will be described later, this coincided

with the first rubber planting boom in the

European estate sector. This change in

the allocation of page space in the Mukim

Register may reflect an awareness on the

British side that land transactions among

Malay smallholders would become more

frequent in the future.

120

If the British most probably devised

the Mukim Register in full anticipation

that Malay smallholdings would be com

moditized, the very existence of the Register

in turn promoted the commoditization

process. Land began to be registered

under individual names; the procedure for

alienation was clearly specified; the transfer

of ownership was regulated and guaranteed

legally. These characteristics of the Regis

ter all contributed to the rapid commodi

tization of land. As will be discussed later,

Malay peasants were already speculating inopening up and selling smallholdings during

the 1905-1908 rubber planting boom. In

retrospect it is the Mukim Register, among

other things, which bred and nurtured

Malay attachment to land ownership,

although not necessarily to the land itself.

IV Establishment of Pekan

(Market Towns)

The last quarter of the nineteenth

century was a time of great transformation

in Negeri Sembilan. The general atmo

sphere was replete with new experiences

and new expectations. Malay peasants

increasingly came into contact with un

familiar peoples and institutions in their

own environment. As a result of the

expansion of the cassava estates, more and

more Chinese were seen in the Malay

countryside. Some of them were operating

as merchants among the Malay villagers in

the 1890s [Gullick 1951: 53]. An in

creasing number of Sumatran Malays came

to the peninsula, including Negeri

Sembilan, as agricultural pioneers, mer-


chants or estate workers [Hill 1977: 127;

Kratoska 1985: 17; Gullick 1951: 52

53]. Malays, who may initially have been

"unable to suppress their wonders at the

whiteness of a European skin, and astonish

ment at being able to see the veins in it"

became accustomed to the sight of European

planters and colonial officials, and even to

Sikh police. 10) After the consolidation of

British rule, such hitherto unknown insti

tutions as police stations, and later

vernacular schools, were established. The

expansion and improvement of road

systems further stimulated the movement of

peoples, commodities, and ideas.

In particular, transformations during this

period meant that Malay peasants were

increasingly drawn into the money economy.

For one thing, each house under the Malay

Grants had to pay an annual house tax of

one dollar to the colonial government.

There were more and more opportunities

for wage labour available, for example,

forest clearing at European coffee estates or

road construction sites [Rathborne 1984:

50,331-332; Hill 1977: 138]. As already

mentioned, a large number of Malays were

also hired in the tapioca industry as

labourers or drivers of bullock carts (see

also Rathborne [1984: 37] and Jackson

[1968 : 74]). Circular migration was

becoming common. Though referring to

Malacca in the early 1880s, Rathborne

[1984: 34] makes the following observation

10) The quotation is from Rathbome [1984: 193].It describes the reaction of Malays in Perakwhen they saw a white man (Rathbome) for thefirst time, probably in the late 1880s. A similarreaction possibly occured among the Malays ofNegeri Sembilan.

concerning circular migration:

Malay silversmiths, blacksmiths, and

carpenters are fast being superseded by

Chinese, and as the villagers have no

trades to give them occupation during the

time there is nothing doing in the fields,

many of the men leave their homes in

search of employment, returning at

frequent intervals, for they are able by

working three months in the year to

supply themselves with all the necessaries

they require for the remaining nine.

At the hub of these transformations and

commotions were the pekan or market

towns. New institutions such as police

stations, vernacular schools, dispensaries,

and later offices for penghulu (mukim

officials) were usually established In

pekan. ll) Chinese, Indians, Europeans,

and Malays congregated there. Pekan

were the nodal points of transportation

systems, through which money, peoples,

commodities, and ideas circulated. At

shops and stalls in pekan the Malays were

introduced to soap, matches, kerosene oil,

and firecrackers. At coffee shops and small

restaurants they also came to know the

habit of tea- or coffee-drinking and acquired

a taste for Chinese noodles and Indian

11) Evidently there were variations as to when thepenghulu were instituted in different districts ofNegeri Sembilan. There were no penghuluyet in Kuala Pilah in 1916, while there werealready appointees in Jelebu in 1910. In thelatter district land applications began to bemade through penghulu, not through lembaga,after 1910 (AR KP 1916, p. 7; AR JB 1910,p.11).

121

roti canai (Indian "pancake").

I do not know the history of pekan in

Negeri Sembilan. Old pekan were usually

established at the major confluences and

kuala (river mouths) of relatively heavily

trafficked rivers. Yet, judging from the

fact that the modern pekan in Malay

society were, and still are, primarily

inhabited by Chinese (and in some cases by

Indians), the growth of contemporary pekan

must date back to the time when the Chinese

started taking up residence in inland Negeri

Sembilan. The development of roads was

another important factor, as these pekan

are located along trunk roads.

As already mentioned, tapioca factories

were connected with Malacca via cart roads

or metalled roads. The transportation of

goods between these places was two-way.

Bullock carts brought tapioca to Malacca

and carried back factory provisions on their

return trip [Jackson 1968 : 72-73] . As

pekan were established, it is probable that

these bullock carts also began to transport

from Malacca goods for sale at the pekan.

In the meantime, pekan functioned as

collection points of forest products such as

rattan and damar. According to a man in

his late seventies in Inas, in his childhood,

he used to accompany his father in carrying

rattan or damar from the village to Pekan

Johol, the pekan nearest to Inas. Given

these developments, the transportation of

goods by bullock cart became a business in

itself.

Pekan J ohol was already in existence

around 1890, complete with police station

and shops (NSSF 966/92). One of the

shops was probably an opium shop supply-

122

ing to the Chinese cassava estates.12) As

early as 1892 a certain W.H.I. Silva pro

posed to the British Resident of Negeri

Sembilan that, if given government

assistance, he would be willing to run a daily

mail coach between Malacca and Kuala

Pilah via Tampin and Pekan J ohol in ten

hours (NSSF 553/92). The proposal

indicates the existence of a good road system

as well as frequent contacts and communi

cations along this route. The first ver

nacular school in the area was being

constructed in Pekan J ohol in 1898 [NSSF

3036/98].

In essence the pekan were the embodi

ment of the money economy. It was at

the pekan that money and goods could be

exchanged and unfamiliar and attractive

commodities could be purchased for a

price. There had already been increasing

opportunities to earn cash before the

establishment of colonial rule, for instance,

carrying out odd jobs around Chinese tin

mines and working for wages at cassava

estates; these were all significant for the

expansion of a money economy. But far

more important than this was the fact that

the pekan, together with the itinerant

Chinese merchants who carried goods on

a pole and travelled between the pekan and

Malay villages, constituted institutionalized

agents of consumption goods and thus

aroused new material wants in the hearts

of Malay peasants.

Rathborne, who opened a coffee estate at

12) It is not clear when the first opium shop was builtbut there was an application by a Chinese toopen the second opium shop in Pekan Johol in1893 (NSSF 463/93).


Gunung [Mt.] Berembun, near the border

between Kuala Pilah and Seremban (Map

1), in the early 1880s, makes the following

observation about his Malay workers, most

of whom must have come from N egeri

Sembilan:

I always entertained them [Malay

workers] to tea, and their wonder was

at the clock, whose pendulum swung

backwards and forwards with constant

regularity; and the ticking of my watch

would surprise and amuse them as they

placed it to their ears. Photographs

they did not seem to understand at all,

. . . . Notwithstanding the strangeness of

their surroundings they never appeared

gauche or awkward except when sitting

on a chair for the first time, and then

they would sit gingerly on the very edge

of the seat, and were apparently half

afraid lest it should give way beneath

their weight. [Rathborne 1984: 53]

Malay naivete about European material

culture was to undergo a rapid change.

Curious products which Rathborne showed

to his Malay workers soon ceased to be

objects of mere novelty and became objects

of craving. In 1896, reviewing the first

ten years of British rule in N egeri Sembilan,

Cazalas, the acting District Officer of

Kuala Pilah, made the following remark:

Ten years experience of the people

here have demonstrated that

weakness for fine cloths and for adorning

themselves with gold and silver orna

ments has increased in proportion as

facilities for procuring money has [sic]

advanced a fondness for tweed

suits, felt caps, smoking caps and even

the 'sola topi' has been creating [sic].

(quoted by Hill [1977: 138])

Through their exposure to the pekan, the

Malay peasantry of Negeri Sembilan was

immutably enticed into a journey toward

the money economy, a journey with no

return.

V Introduction of Cultivated

Rubber to Malaya

Concerned about the presumably Im

pending depletion of tin deposits in western

Malay States, Rathborne [1984: 153] wrote

as follows in the late 1890s:

. . . these alluvial deposits are now

within measurable distance of being

exhausted along the western coast; and

then the mining population will have to

turn their attention to the undeveloped

eastern side of the mountain. Before

this takes place it is to be hoped that the

permanent cultivation of some agri

cultural products will have extended suf

ficiently to enable this certain loss of

revenue to be in some measure recouped,

and that the nomadic habits of a con

siderable proportion of the Malay settlers

will not cause them to abandon their

holdings and migrate elsewhere, following

in the wake of the mining industry.

The Victorian prospector's hope was to be

answered dramatically in a short while by

123

the spectacular rise of rubber in the early

twentieth century.

The general history of the introduction of

Hevea brasz"llenst"s to Malaya is well known;

it is hardly necessary to retell it here in

great detail. Suffice to say that it took

over a quarter of a century from the first

importation of Hevea seeds from Brazil,

via Kew Gardens in England, to Singapore

in 1877 and then eventually to Malaya in the

early twentieth century.

N egeri Sembilan is one of three Malay

states where rubber cultivation expanded

quickly from the beginning of this century;

the other two are Perak and Selangor.

The successful shipment of rubber from the

Linsum Estate in 1902 signaled a bright

future for the new commercial crop. As

if encouraged by the satisfactory showing

of this first consignment, impetus for rubber

cultivation mounted in N egeri Sembilan.

In 1903 alone there were applications for

rubber land covering roughly 20,000 acres

in the state [Jackson 1968: 225].

Convinced of the future of rubber, the

colonial government encouraged the expan

sion of European-managed rubber estates

in Malaya [Lim 1977 : 72-73] . They

gave them tax incentives and offered them,

with favourable conditions, abandoned

tapioca or gambier estates which needed no

forest clearing for rubber planting. They

earmarked land near roads and railways for

them, and eventually facilitated the im

portation of estate labourers from India.

Buoyed by the rising rubber prices between

1905 and 1906, and assisted by London

capital, rubber cultivation expanded phe

nomenally in Western Malaya between

124

1905 and 1908. The areas planted with

rubber in the three states of Perak,

Selangor, and N egeri Sembilan increased

from 43,410 acres to 166,257 acres between

these years. In Negeri Sembilan alone

they expanded from 5,718 acres to 27,305

acres during the same period [Jackson

1968: 229]. Major centres of rubber

cultivation in N egeri Sembilan at this early

stage were the districts of Seremban and

Pantai (Port Dickson). In these districts

the Chinese were also beginning to plant

rubber, oftentimes mixed with cassava or

gambier.

Rubber prices, and later government

regulations, strongly influenced the sub

sequent expansion of rubber cultivation.

There was a sharp price rise between 1909

and 1910, followed by a severe downfall in

1913. And modest recovery was registered

between 1915 and 1916, only to be counter

manded by a continuous downward trend,

with a minor recovery in 1919, until the

implementation of the Stevenson [rubber

restriction] Scheme (1922-1928). Due

largely to the impact of the restriction

scheme, prices rose again in 1924 and 1925;

they began to drop in 1926 and plunged

during the Great Depression. In response

to this dismal state, the International

Rubber Regulation Agreement, signed by

the British, Dutch, Siamese, and French

governments, was implemented in 1934.

After its renewal in 1938, the scheme

remained effective until the outbreak of the

Second World War. The second restriction

scheme greatly helped to raise and stabilize

rubber prices but never managed to bring

about the kind of recovery effected by the


VI History of Rubber Smallholdingin Mukim Johol

By checking through the Mukim Reg

ister, one is able to study the local history

of rubber smallholding in a particular area.

This is what I did for M ukim J ohol by

examining the Mukim Register in the Land

Office of Kuala Pilah.

Table 1 shows the number of approved

applications for rubber lots registered in

the Mukim Register of Mukim Johol. It

covers the pre-war period from 1907 when

the first application for a rubber lot was

approved in Mukim Johol until 1940 when

the expansion of rubber smallholdings had

long ceased to be significant. The years

indicated in the table refer to dates when

applications were approved by the Land

Office, not when extracts were issued.

There was usually a time lag of several

months to a few years between these two

time points. Lots could be utilized once

the application had been approved; but

they could not be mortgaged or transferred

until the extracts were issued. While

Table 1 shows the increase in the number of

smallholdings in M ukim J ohol, Table 2

indicates the area of expansion of rubber

smallholdings in Inas. There is little

difference in growth trends between the two

tables (compare Table 2 with "Inas" in

Table 1), so I basically rely on Table 1 in

the following discussion.

Rubber smallholdings in Mukim Johol

Stevenson Scheme, especially for the period

1924-1925. Throughout the 1930s there

were no more dramatic fluctuations in

rubber prices, such as· were characteristic

of the rubber· market in the first three

decades of the twentieth century.

The expansion of rubber cultivation

generally followed price increases, and later

was influenced increasingly by government

regulations. The 1905-1908 initial boom

was further fueled by high rubber prices

between 1909 and 1911 and was to be

followed by another notable expansion in

1915-1917. During the period of the

Stevenson Scheme (1922-1928), the new

alienation of rubber was prohibited by the

colonial government, and the new planting

of rubber on existing land discouraged.

After a short interval during which this

policy was reversed, new alienation was

again prohibited in 1930, in response to the

serious price drop during the Great De

pression. From 1934 onwards this pro

hibition was accompanied by a ban on the

new planting of rubber in Malaya; these

"double restrictions" were to continue

until the beginning of the war, with the

exception of a short period between 1939

and 1940 [Allen and Donnithorne 1954:

126; Barlow 1978: 71; Bauer 1948: 3, 5,

43, 43, n.1, 65; Lim 1977: 153-154J.

One conclusion we may draw from the

existence of these restrictions is that the

great expansion of rubber cultivation in

Malaya, either in the estate or smallholding

sectors, effectively ended, or at least greatly

slowed down, after the implementation of

the Stevenson Scheme. As will be shown

shortly, this was not exactly what happened

with smallholdings in Mukim

most probably elsewhere

Sembilan.

Johol, and

III Negeri

125

JIU,p" ~ 7lVf~ 29@ 2 "'"

Table 1 Historical Changes in the Number of Smallholdings in Mukim Johol

Inas "Other Johol"

Malay Chinese Indian Total Malay Chinese Indian Total

1907 0 0 0 0 84 2 0 861908 0 0 0 0 52 0 0 521909 0 0 0 0 22 11 0 331910 8 7 0 15 48 17 1 661911 0 3 0 3 4 5 0 91912 3 7 0 10 10 27 0 371913 2 2 0 4 8 17 3 281914 1 2 0 3 3 2 0 51915 13 5 0 18 12 35 3 501916 7 1 0 8 92 39 2 1331917 12 0 0 12 24 19 0 431918 0 0 0 0 4 11 0 151919 1 0 0 1 7 4 0 111920 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1921 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01922 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1923 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1924 3 0 0 3 30 0 0 301925 15 0 0 15 43 0 0 431926 57 0 0 57 81 0 0 811927 21 0 0 21 92 0 0 921928 33 0 0 33 84 0 0 84

1929 8 0 0 8 34 0 0 341930 3 0 0 3 24 0 0 241931 2 0 0 2 5 0 0 51932 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 11933 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 11934 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01935 1 0 0 1 4 0 0 4

1936 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 11937 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 41938 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 2

1939 1 0 0 1 4 0 0 4

1940 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Total 191 27 0 218 780 189 9 978

Source: Mukim Register of Mukim Johol, Land Office of Kuala Pilah

began shortly after the high rubber prices Dato' of Johol (adat chief of Luhak Johol)

of 1905-1906, precisely the years when the had already proposed to the government

first rubber planting boom took place in the a special scheme to encourage rubber

estate sector. As early as late 1905 the smallholdings in Joho!. Local reception of

126

T. KATO: When RubberCame: The Negeri Sembilan Experience

Table 2 Historical Expansion in the Area Size of Smallholdings in Inas

Malay Chinese Total

Acre Rod Pole Acre Rod Pole Acre Rod Pole

1907 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01908 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01909 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01910 25 0 35 41 3 33 67 0 281911 0 0 0 13 3 35 13 3 351912 10 0 16.3 38 1 20 48 1 36.31913 9 1 0 8 0 20 17 1 201914 2 1 29 3 3 19.2 6 1 8.21915 24 3 20 23 3 28 48 3 81916 15 0 7.8 2 2 25 17 2 32.81917 26 2 11 0 0 0 26 2 111918 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01919 6 0 1 0 0 0 6 0 11920 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01921 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01922 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01923 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01924 5 1 33 0 0 0 5 1 331925 47 3 3.3 0 0 0 47 3 3.31926 183 0 20.2 0 0 0 183 0 20.21927 61 1 23.1 0 0 0 61 1 23.11928 86 2 16.6 0 0 0 86 2 16.61929 26 0 39.7 0 0 0 26 0 39.71930 11 3 3 0 0 0 11 3 31931 5 1 0 0 0 0 5 1 01932 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01933 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01934 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01935 4 2 38 0 0 0 4 2 381936 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01937 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01938 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01939 5 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 01940

Total 556 3 17 132 3 20.2 689 2 37.2

Source: Mukim Register of Mukim Johol, Land Office of Kuala Pilah

the scheme was good and the District Officer among British officials. Under the revised

of Kuala Pilah was supportive of it. The scheme, $350 was set aside out of official

revised scheme was finally approved in funds to purchase seeds and set up nurseries

March 1906 after considerable discussions for germination. "It was reported that the

127

Malays of Johol were busily clearing the

lots which the Settlement Officer had

demarcated" [Drabble 1973: 41; see also

Lim 1977: 79]. Unfortunately no fol

lowup report on this scheme is extant.

Some of the "early lots" of "Other Johol"

in Table 1 may have possibly been opened

up under this scheme.

In comparison to "Other Johol" rubber

cultivation in Inas started a little later.

The fact that Inas was isolated from the

Kuala Pilah-Tampin trunk road seems

largely to explain this lag. According to

an old man in Inas, Inas people, without

much previous contact with the outside

world, were ignorant and afraid of trying

new things such as planting rubber.

There were several pioneers in Inas

in the early stages of rubber smallholding.

Among them were Penghulu Sulong (then

Datuk Penghulu Inas) , two lembaga and

Haji J ambi, a wealthy merchant immigrant

from Sumatra [Lewis 1962: 292]. Like

the Dato' of Johol mentioned above,

pioneer smallholders in general were proba

bly people of means in the village.

Although not indicated in Table 1, one

characteristic of early rubber smallholding

in "Other J ohol" was its speculative nature

to a certain degree. For example, in

Kampong Kuala Johol and Kampong

Mesjid Tua, two kampong situated along

the trunk road, there were 86 Malay

smallholdings approved between 1907 and

1909. Out of this figure, 53 lots were sold

to Chinese and 24 to Malays within several

years after their applications were approved,

that is, even before the rubber trees started

bearing. The majority of transactions took

128

place in 1913 when rubber prices dropped.

Apart from possible economic difficulties,

this easy release of lots seems to indicate

a lack of committment to rubber cultivation

among the early Malay smallholders. I

may add here that most of the plots bought

by Chinese were eventually mortgaged to

Chettier moneylenders in 1920. Rubber

prices plunged between the beginning and

the end of 1920 [Barlow 1978: 56].13 )

Evidently the above tendency discerned

in Mukim J ohol was not an isolated case.

After noting a considerable increase in the

number of smallholdings between 1908

and 1912, the Negri Sembilan Administra

tion Report for the year 1912 makes the

following observation:

These figures indicate a steady demand

for land by native cultivators, but would

be more satisfactory if all the small

holdings taken up remained in the hands

of small cultivators. Unfortunately, a

certain number of them are sold after

a year or two, in some cases before they

have even been planted, but usually after

being cleared and planted with rubber

trees, to adjacent estates or persons who

are already considerable land owners, and,

except in the Kuala Pilah, Tampin and

J elebu districts, where the Customary

Lands Enactment is in force, the law

provides no check upon such transactions

and there only in the case of lands entered

13) Kampong Kuala Johol and Mesjid Tua werechosen as samples in my survey of the landregisters because they are located along theKuala Pilah-Tampin trunk road and Malayrubber smallholdings started earlier here thanin other areas of Joho!.


as customary lands in the register. (NS

AR 1912, p. 6)

The expansion of rubber smallholdings

in Mukim Johol was concentrated in two

periods before 1940: 1907-1917 and 1924

1930. Active planting during the two

periods was clearly influenced by high

rubber prices.

The first period was obviously instigated

by rising rubber prices between 1905 and

1906, and by the 1905-1908 rubber planting

boom at the estate sector. There was

a "steady demand," according to the Negri

Sembilan Administration Report for the

year 1911, for smallholdings in Negeri

Sembilan from 1909 through 1911: "Proba

bly a large proportion of these lots were

taken up with a view to cultivation of

rubber" (NS AR 1911, p. 5). (The

Administration Report gives figures of

smallholdings only from 1909 to 1911 but

the "steady demand" must have started

earlier than 1909.)

Above all, the period between 1915 and

1917 is considered "an era of rapid planting

on the part of smallholders, both Malay

and Chinese, particularly in the western

Malay States" [Jackson 1968: 257J. The

District Officer of Kuala Pilah made the

following comment on the condition in his

district in 1916:

The local Malays were badly bitten with

the rubber craze, partly no doubt owing

to the example set by Europeans and

others, but chiefly I think, as a large

number of small holdings came into

bearing during 1916 and it was seen how

profitable a few acres of rubber in bearing

are at present. Hundreds of Malays

thronged the office daily clamouring for

land and the books [of the M ukim

RegisterJ had to be closed on two oc

caSIOns during the year. (AR KP

1916, p. 3)

The second rubber planting boom was

preceded by several years of no active

planting. The lack of action was caused

by price falls and the prohibition of new

alienation during the Stevenson Scheme.

Difficulties encountered by the rubber

industry in production and exportation

under war-time conditions were not en

couraging either for the expansion of rubber

cultivation.

In Table 1 it is noteworthy that no more

Chinese (and Indian) smallholdings are

observable after 1919. Probably the Malay

Reservations Enactment is largely re

sponsible for this phenomenon. The

enactment, which purports to preserve

"Malay lands or reservations" under Malay

ownership and for future Malay occupation,

was initially drafted in July 1913. This was

a reaction to the contemporary trend

whereby many Malay smallholdings were

sold to non-Malays as discussed above.

After the enforcement of the Malay Reser

vations Enactment, alienation and land

transactions in the smallholding sector

became increasingly difficult and unat

tractive to non-Malays. The implemen

tation of the enactment was scheduled for

January 1st 1914 but concrete steps were

not taken until 1915 [Drabble 1973: 102].

In Negeri Sembilan, it was only in 1916

129

that the enactment was actually imple

mented in most mukim of Kuala Pilah,

Tampin and J elebu. As far as Mukim

J ohol is concerned, it was most probably

effected in 1917.14 )

It is surprising that the second period of

the rubber planting boom (1924-1930) was

as important as, or in case of Inas more

important than, the first period in Mukim

Johol. This is particularly so because new

alienation was supposedly prohibited in

Malaya after the Stevenson Scheme (1922

1928), apart from the exceptional years of

14) This delay in implementing the enactment in thethree districts of Negeri Sembilan is explainedas follows: "When the Enactment of 1913 waspassed, this course did not seem necessaryowing to the protection against alienation ofMalay customary holdings afforded by theCustomary Tenure Enactment of 1909, whichapplies to the three districts of Kuala Pilah,Tampin and J elebu, but to secure this protectionit was necessary that the lands should beregistered as customary-Le., lands successionto which follows the 'adat perpateh,' and thiscourse, though suitable in the case of kampongand sawah lands, was found irksome in practiceif applied to lands taken up merely to be cultivated for profit. On the other hand, if theseholdings were not registered as customary,there was nothing to prevent their sale later onto Europeans or Chinese, even though they weresituated in the midst of Malay holdings, andafter careful consideration the State Councildecided on the course which was adopted ashaving the advantage of allowing Malays totake up land in their own mukims to cultivatefor profit which they would be free to dispose ofwithout obtaining the consent of the tribe andat the same time securing that, if the lands werein a locality predominantly Malay, they shouldnot pass into non-Malay hands" (NS AR1916, pp. 9-10). In 1916 "A further reservation at Inas is under consideration" (/oc. cit.).The expansion of Malay reservations continuedin the three districts in 1917 (NS AR 1917,p.3).

130

Table 3 Number of "Nil Lots" in Mukim Johol

Inas "Other J ohol" Total

1925 2 4 61926 11 24 351927 12 75 871928 31 74 1051929 3 18 211930 0 22 221931 1 4 51932 0 1 11933 0 1 11934 0 0 0

1935 1 4 51936 0 0 0

1937 0 1 11938 0 0 01939 1 0 11940 0 0 0

Total 62 228 290

Source: M ukim Register of M ukim Johol, LandOffice of Kuala Pilah

1928-1930 and 1939-1940 [Bauer 1948: 3,

5, 43, 43, n.l, 65].Part of the explanation for this "anomaly"

is found in the "nature of cultivation"

clause in the Mukim Register. Many

"nil," which were not extant in the earlier

period, are found In the "nature of

cultivation" clause among the entries made

after 1924, that is, during the second rubber

planting boom (Table 3). I equated the

"nil" with "rubber" in tabulating Table

1 for the following reasons. An official at

the Land Office of Kuala Pilah with long

experience in land administration informed

me that the "nil" was in reality the same as

"rubber." Some entries under "nil" in

the Mukim Register had "rubber" written

in pencil after the "nil." The tax rates for

"nil lots" were exactly the same as those of


"rubber lots," which were much higher than

those of sawah or kampong.

The above observation strongly suggests

that rubber smallholdings in Mukim Johol

expanded significantly under the guise of

"nil" when new alienation for rubber land

was prohibited. In addition, "rubber lots"

themselves increased during the second

period (compare Tables 1 and 3). In fact,

rubber holdings registered as such in both

the estate and smallholding sectors in Negeri

Sembilan as a whole increased remarkably

between 1917 and 1939 (see Table 5 on

page 150).15)

Old people in Inas remember the period

of the second rubber restriction scheme as

years of great prosperity. This IS so

despite the fact that rubber prices during

this period were not as high as during the

time of the Stevenson Scheme. One of the

reasons for this incongruity lies in the fact

that a far greater number of Malay peasants

were involved in rubber tapping during

the second restriction scheme than during

the first. It is important to realize that the

cumulative total of smallholdings acquired

and planted from 1907 through to the

1920s were practically all at the bearing

stage when the International Rubber

Restriction Agreement was implemented

in 1934. We must also recall that, prior

to the implementation of the Malay Reser

vations Enactment (around 1917 in Mukim

Johol), many Malay lots were sold to non-

15) Unfortunately I do not know how common"nil lots" were in other districts of NegeriSembilan and whether they were counted as"rubber lots" in calculating macro statisticssuch as those listed in Table 5.

Malays who themselves, until that time, had

been active in opening up rubber small

holdings. In this sense, the expansion of

smallholdings in the 1920s was critical

because it signified a more or less pure

gain in the number of Malay holdings and

thus enlarged the involvement of the

Malays in rubber tapping as either owner

tappers or share-tappers.16)

It is difficult to estimate to what degree

the above observation is true for the rest

of N egeri Sembilan or to other Federated

Malay States. Judging from the general

observation that new land alienation and

planting were either prohibited or dis

couraged during the two restriction schemes,

the Johol case might have been an ex

ceptional one. Nevertheless, a further

inquiry into this question is needed to

assess the magnitude and timing of the

economic impact of rubber cultivation in

rural Malaya. As far as Mukim J ohol is

concerned, the latter half of the 1930s is

far more important in this respect than that

of the 1920s.

16) It is also possible that Chinese who hadpurchased Malay lots in the early stage ofrubber expansion later resold them to Malaysafter the Malay Reservations Enactment.However, this possibility is not substantiatedin M ukim Jaha!. A cursory review of Chineselots in Kampong Kuala Johol and KampongMesjid Tua reveals that few, if any, of theChinese lots were sold back to Malays beforethe Second World War. However, this kind oftransaction became common in the early 1950s,especially in 1954. This was probably relatedto the Emergency (1948-1960) and also to theinitiation of a government-sponsored rubberreplanting scheme for smallholders in 1953.

131

VII Implications of Rubber .Smallholding

It is said that Malay settlements in the

nineteenth century tended to lack perma

nence. Rural populations often dispersed

in response to political oppression, economic

exploitation, wars, new economic oppor

tunities, epidemics, or soil deterioration

[Gullick 1958J. The establishment of

British control offered the Malay peasantry

a relatively stable political environment and

thus one more congenial to a settled

existence. Rubber, a perennial crop which

must mature for six to seven years until the

trees can be tapped, further enhanced this

tendency. Note, however, that the colonial

introduction of land registers cut both ways

in this context. On the one hand, land

registration increased the peasants' attach

ment to land ownership, and thus, to some

extent, to the land itself; the institutionali

zation of land ownership, on the other hand,

enhanced the sense of deprivation among

those who owned little or no land and thus

encouraged them to migrate when a better

chance for land ownership became available

outside their village. (The FELDA

scheme owes part of its success to this

"peasant psychology" created after the

colonial introduction of land registers.)

The fact that land is now a liquid com

modity, theoretically easily exchanged for

money, also tends to enhance this mobility;

small landowners can dispose of their

existing lands and leave for a new

settlement.

The eventual spread of rubber over vari-

132

ous parts of British Malaya was also

instrumental for the rapid expansion of the

transportation system, railways as well as

roads, III the peninsula [Kaur 1985].

One by-product of this was that dusun or

orchards became an important economic

asset, as fruit, an easily perishable commod

ity, could now be marketed in towns and

cities largely to Chinese. For example, after

the town of Kuala Pilah was connected with

Bahau by rail in 1910, durian from villages

around Kuala Pilah became a lucrative

commodity (AR KP 1912, p. 6). Likewise,

durian harvested at Chiong in Inas became

marketable only after a three-foot road

(jalan Hga kaki) was built in the 1920s

between Sekolah Melayu Inas and Kuala

Johol, a junction on the Kuala Pilah

Tampin-Malacca trunk road.

In step with these developments in the

transportation systems, Malay settlement

patterns also underwent a transformation.

According to old people in Inas, the best

locations for houses were considered to be

near sawah, streams or footpaths connecting

settlements and sawah. In time past it was

common for the front part of the house to

face the sawah. As cart roads and later

metalled roads were constructed, more and

more houses began to be built along them

(see also Gullick [1958: 27] and Kaur

[1985: 13-14]). This tendency was a pre

cursor of contemporary Malay settlement

patterns where most houses are lined up

along the roads, usually away from the

sawah. A tangible sign of change in

Malay settlement patterns is still occasion

ally seen in the location of mosques. Old

mosques tended to be built near a river or


stream. Nowadays, if a road is located

away from the river, a new mosque is

usually constructed by the roadside.

(Moslems need access to water for ablutions

before their daily prayers; the availability

of piped water now allows flexibility in the

choice of mosque locations.) In the

countryside of Kuala Pilah, one sometimes

comes across abandoned mosques in a

dilapidated state, away from the road but

near a river.

Chinese involvement m rubber culti

vation signified their decision to make

Malaya a place of long-term or permanent,

rather than temporary, residence. In

cassava cultivation, they could reap quick

returns and even squeeze out profits from

an entire estate within several years.

Rubber cultivation, in contrast, required

a long-range committment. Change in

the Chinese orientation in this respect is

reflected in the development of Pekan

Johol. Reportedly it was already a sizable

Chinese settlement in the first decade of the

twentieth century. However, shops still

had atap-roofs and atap-walls. The first

brick-built shop (kedai batu) appeared in

1918. A Chinese primary school, sup

ported by well-to-do merchants of the

pekan, came into being in 1924. This

meant a complete departure from the "era

of tin-mines and cassava estates" when

families were a minority among the male

dominated Chinese population In rural

N egeri Sembilan.

Closer relationships between some

Chinese and Malay individuals continued

in the twentieth century when the rural

rubber market was more or less controlled

by Chinese merchants. It seems that

interracial relations then were not as

problematic as they were to become after

the Second W orId War. "[T]he tendency

here [in the District of Kuala Pilah] of

Malay women to follow Chinese" was

still observed in 1912 (AR KP 1912, p. 4).

The adoption of Chinese girls by Malay

couples was not unusual either, judging

from the existence of several, clearly

Chinese-looking old women in Inas (see

also Lewis [1962: 30, n. 1]).17) Chinese

shops were also commonly found in the

17) Adoption for the sake of continuing a matrilinewas common in Negeri Sembilan; whereas thiswas not the case in the Minangkabau society ofWest Sumatra. I was told in Inas that in addition to their fair skin, Chinese girls werepreferred for adoption because they wouldnot be claimed back by their original parentseven after they grew up. This was not necessarily the case with adopted Malay girls.Demographic factors may have been partlyresponsible for this preference. It is myimpression that the Malay birth rate and theratio of children surviving to maturity inNegeri Sembilan increased only after the 1900swhen rural Malays began to enjoy prosperity,sufficient and better food supplies, and im

proved hygiene and sanitary conditions. Theseimprovements were due largely to the development of dispensaries and transportation systemsunder British control, and to the economicprosperity derived from expanding rubbercultivation. Until then, Malay families probably could seldom afford to relinquish childrenfor adoption. Even if they did so, manychildren died before reaching maturity andthus the parents must have been prompted toclaim back children given in for adoption. Onthe other hand, destitute immigrant Chinesefamilies must have been more willing to give uptheir children for adoption, especially their

daughters. Unfortunately the historicaldemography of Malaya is not a well developed

area of investigation, and these commentsremain very speculative in nature.

133

Malay villages of Negeri Sembilan before

the arrival of the Japanese army during

the war.

One interesting by-product of rubber

smallholding could be the deepening

knowledge of Islam among the Malays.

The rural Malays of Malacca and Negeri

Sembilan in the late nineteenth century

do not strike one as being strongly self

conscious about their religion. Rathborne,

who spent many years in Malacca and

Negeri Sembilan in the late nineteenth

century, makes the following observation:

They [Malays] .are not strict Moslems,

neglecting many of the observances and

tenets of that religion when they clash

with their own pleasures and indulgences.

The fasting month of Ramadhan is kept

by many only in a most perfunctory

manner, and they have holy places at

which they make their vows, whilst spirit

legends and folk-lore enter largely into

their faith. [Rathborne 1984: 58]

Dogs, presumably abhorred by Moslems,

were a common sight in Malay settlements,

again according to Rathborne [ibz'd.: 29-30,

33].

This situation seems to have changed

in the early twentieth century. One

significant factor in this change, in my

opinion, was the increasing prosperity of

the Malay peasantry. Profits from rubber

cultivation helped boost the number of

pilgrims to Mecca and also those who

sought Islamic learning in Patani, Kedah,

Kelantan and later Sumatra. Upon their

return to their native places these individuals

134

must have been instrumental in deepening

the level of Islamic knowledge amongst

rural Malays. Closer contacts with infidel,

pig-eating Chinese must also have height

ened the Malays' self-awareness of their

faith. The construction of expensive

mosques in the 1930s is another expres

sion of this trend,18)

As if in reflection of this increased self

awareness of Islamic faith, Malay naming

styles also changed. Names which appear

in the Malay Grants seldom sound very

Arabic. A few notable examples of non

Arabic names, which I found in the Malay

Grants of Mukim J ohol, are Sulong

(eldest child), Hitam (black), and Pendek

(short). Names which later appear in the

Mukim Register are increasingly more

Arabic-sounding.

Furthermore, the Malay Grants often

fail to make proper usage of "bin" (son of)

and "bintz''' (daughter of) in writing down

the names of owners for the registers. Both

male and female names are interjected with

"bin." In some cases single, non-Arabic

names are written down without being

followed by "bin" or "binti" at all. Even

if "bin" is interjected, the space after it,

which should be filled with one's father'sname, often remains vacant,19)

18) In travelling around Negeri Sembilan, Iencountered at least three such mosques inKuala Pilah and one in Rembau. They arebuilt of either solid wood or bricks. Decorative

coloured glass and tile roofs are commonfeatures. The roof-styles and roof-decorations,which resemble those of Chinese temples,suggest that they might have been built byChinese carpenters, probably from Malacca.

19) No proper distinction is made either betweenHaji and Hajah in the Malay Grants; both men)'"


The lack of expertise in the usage of

"bin" and "binti" disappears completely

in the Mukim Registers. Not only are

"bin" and "binti" properly used but the

space after "bin" and "binti," with a few

exceptions, IS almost always followed by

a male name. I suspect that this complete

turn-around was partly due to adminis

trative guidance by the colonial officials.

The Mukim Register, since its inception,

presupposed frequent land transactions

among Malay smallholdings. Yet in this

system of land registration, modelled after

the Torrens System, entries in the registers

were, and are, equivalent to land titles.

Thus the Land Office had to be extremely

careful in ascertaining the identity of land

owners, in the case of either new alienation

or land transactions. The usage of "bin"

and "binti" was one sure way of improving

this process and thus lessening confusion

and conflict in land transactions. Other

than reflecting the increasing Malay self

awareness of their faith, the Mukim Regis

ter might have been largely responsible for

the spread of Arabic names, interjected with

"bin" and "binti," among the Malay

peasantry. 20)

Apart from these ramifying implications,

\. and women who made up pilgrimage to Mecca,were referred to as Haji. Azizah Kassim, whoworked with me at the Land Office of KualaPilah, helped me to understand the J awi scriptof the Malay Grants.

20) This situation contrasts with Indonesia where,although the population are overwhelminglyMoslems, the usage of "bin" and "binti" hasnever become popular. Syncretism among theJavanese, the politically dominant group, andthe lack of land legislation outside Java mayaccount for this difference.

two more implications of rubber cultivation

are worth our special attention: its influence

on material culture and on rice cultivation.

VIII Chan~es in Material Culture

Undoubtedly one of the most important

consequences of rubber smallholding was

that the money economy finally came to

dominate the lives of Malay peasants.

Rubber is a cash crop par excellence. It

brings in money weekly or even daily.

Its response to market prices is quick

because trees can be tapped at short notice

any time after they have reached the

bearing stage. As rubber cannot be

consumed locally, it necessitates the de

velopment of transportation and marketing

systems for its exportation. The system

works both ways. Rubber is transported

out and outside goods transported in.

The inward and outward movements of

commodities are mutually reinforcing; more

rubber means more money, and more money

means the importation of more goods from

outside, which in turn whets people's

appetites for more money. The circle

does not necessarily run smoothly since

rubber prices are an extremely important

factor In this equation. Nevertheless,

rubber cultivation tends to generate its own

momentum and, once set in motion, the

penetration of a money economy accerelates.

The expansion of rubber cultivation

brought about drastic changes in the

material culture of the Malay peasantry in

Negeri Sembilan. One may even wish to

use the term "revolution" to describe this

change; the change was far-reaching and

135

accomplished within a short time span.

The material culture of the Negeri

Sembilan Malays was relatively simple

before the turn of the century;. it was

probably still so even up to the 1910s

despite the fact that the road-side pekan

had already begun to spring up in rural

areas by the turn of the century. The

following account is mainly based on my

interviews with old people in Inas. 21 )

Houses in Inas used to be built of logs of

appropriate diameter with their tree barks

merely peeled off. Building materials were

atap for roofs, atap or woven bamboo

matting for walls, and split bamboo or

nibon bark for flooring. No nails were

used. The stairs leading up to the floor

level of this house on stilts were basically

wooden ladders which could be pulled

inside the house at night.

Furniture was minimal, consisting of

woven mats for sitting or sleeping and

wooden chests (petz') for storing clothes or

other valuable possessions. A damar

(resin) lamp was the usual means of lighting

at night. Kitchen and cooking utensils

were also minimal. Cooking was done with

firewood. Earthen pots were more common

than iron pans. Ladles were made of

coconut shell with wooden handles.

Wooden plates or banana leaves were used

as plates when eating. Villagers drank

unboiled water from kendz· (earthenware

water pitchers). Coconut shells (gapong) ,

gourds or bamboo tubes (kancung) were

21) Concerning the material culture of the MalaccaMalays in the late nineteenth century, seeRathborne [1984: 28-31]. His description issimilar to that of the old people of Inas.

136

used as water containers. Cooking oil

and flour were not as plentiful then as they

are now. The most popular methods of

cooking were boiling (for example, gulat' or

curry-cooking) and roasting or broiling

(panggang and bakar). Deep-frying (go

reng) , very characteristic of contemporary

Malay cooking, was not common then.

Matches, soap, and cigarettes were

practically unknown. Villagers still enjoyed

sirih-chewing, rather than cigarette-smok

ing.

The material culture of Malay villagers

improved dramatically after the turn of the

century, especially after the two rubber

boom periods in the 1920s and 1930s. In

the case of Mukim Johol, the latter half of

the 1930s was particularly important in this

respect. As pointed out already, a far

larger number of villagers were involved in

rubber tapping in the 1930s than in the

1920s, thus many reaped the benefits of

rubber cultivation. In addition, the com

moditization of rubber "coupons" during

the second period boosted the purchasing

power of smallholders.

During the two periods of the rubber

restriction schemes, the British colonial

government issued quarterly coupons to

smallholders in order to specify the per

missible amount of rubber production from

each holding during a particular quarter.

These coupons were exchanged for export

licenses at ports of shipment. For any

given quarter, rubber dealers could onlyexport the amount of rubber in accordance

with the specifications on the accumulated

export licenses in their hands. Thus,

coupons inevitably formed their own


mar~et which was separate from, yet tied to

the rubber market [Bauer 1948: 121-123,

148-149, 158-159].

Unlike the Stevenson Scheme, coupons

under the International Rubber Regulation

Agreement were freely transferable within

each administrative unit in Malaya, for

example, within the Federated Malay

States. The wider marketability of coupons

naturally tended to push up their price

[Barlow 1978: 64]. The Agreement was

signed among participating countries in

May 1934 and, by autumn of the same

year, there was already a brisk trade in

coupon dealing [Bauer 1948: 120].

Double earnings from smallholdings and

coupons, and the very fact of the market

ability of mere pieces of paper must have

engendered a bonanza mentality among

Malay smallholders. The smallholders

were certainly prosperous [ibid.: 158-159]

but it is this widespread feeling of euphoria

which distinguishes the second rubber

boom from the first. In Inas, it was

reportedly not uncommon for smallholders

just to sell coupons and let others "share

tap" rubber whenever coupons fetched high

prices. There were even cases where no

tapping was carried out because small

holders were already financially content

with the high sale of their coupons (AR KP

1936, n.p.). It was indeed an extravagant

period, both materially and psychologically.

Let us review some notable changes in

the material culture of Inas people after

the two rubber booms. For one thing,

houses began to be built from timber hewn

into square pillars. Occasionally cement

foundations were laid under the pillars.

Planks, instead of woven bamboo mats or

atap, began to be used for walls and

floors. 22) Square pillars and planks were

provided by Chinese carpenters, who also

built fancy houses for some rich Malays.23)

The architectural style itself underwent

a transformation. For example, with the

advent of plank walls, windows became

more elaborate, being sometimes adorned

with balustrades. In some cases, the

serambz' (veranda), which used to be open,

was enclosed by the finely fitted plank walls.

Galvanized zinc roofs were introduced

during this period. Some front stairs

were constructed of cement inlaid with

decorative picture tiles. Glass was seldom

used for windows but coloured glass was

sometimes fitted above the windows for

decoration. What is often touted as the

traditional Malay house actually began to

emerge in rural Negeri Sembilan only after

this period.

I terns of furniture became more numerous

than before: beds, mosquito nets, chairs

and coffee tables were introduced. 24)

Perhaps one of the reasons why the serambi

was enclosed with plank walls was because

chairs and coffee tables began to be placed

22) Planks were still a luxury item at the end of thenineteenth century. Rathborne [1984: 30]observes in Malacca: "Nowadays [in the1880s] wooden planks are used by the betterclass of natives for the sides and floors of theirhouses."

23) Rathborne [1984: 136] says that sawing plankswas the work of Chinese. The Malays usedan adze and wedges for making planks.

24) European-style furniture began to be introducedinto Malay aristocratic households in WesternMalaya much earlier, that is, around the 1870s[Gullick 1958: 129].

137

there and these had to be protected from

sunlight and rain. It seems that much of

the wooden furniture was manufactured, at

least at the initial stages, by Chinese

carpenters in Singapore, Malacca, and

elsewhere in imitation of European models.

Chinaware, glassware and brassware

became increasingly common among

kitchen and cooking wares. Chinese jars

and empty tin calli) began to replace

bamboo tubes and coconut shell as water

containers and ladles. As the coconut

estates spread over Western Malaya,

cooking oil became more readily available.

Coupled with the abundant importation

of iron pans and flour (and also probably

influenced by Chinese or Indian cooking),

deep-frying became a common Malay

cooking method. A whole host of new

commodities-coffee, tea, tinned milk, other

tinned foods, kerosine oil, bottled lemonade,

matches, soap, cigarettes, and so on-were

introduced to rural N egeri Sembilan.

Sugar consumption went up, European

style sponge cakes began to compete with

indigenous sweetmeats made of rice flour,

glutinous rice anQ. brown sugar, and tea

time became an enjoyable event.

Colours and fashionable styles of clothing

increased in variety as textiles became

more readily available and sewing machines

were introduced. (European-style ward

robes became popular as the number of

clothes in the possession of each individual

multiplied.) Velvet songkok (black caps

worn by Malay men) probably began to

be popular at the time as velvet materials

became inexpensive and a songkok maker

could sew songkok easily with the help of a

138

sewing machine. People became markedly

more fashion-conscious as their material

culture improved. According to an old

man near Sri Menanti, village dandies liked

to effect a short "London cue' (gunting

London) hair-style and to wear the shoes

with a fat and round point (which "looked

like having an egg inside") in the 1930s.

One factor which prompted these changes

in material cultural was the Malay (and

Chinese and Indian) craving for things

European. They cultivated a fascination

for European material culture, which came

to be conceived of as generally superior to

theirs. These values were proliferated

through movies, bangsawan ("Malay

opera"), magazines, visits to pekan and

towns or the vicarious experiences of their

families and fellow villagers who studied

or worked with Europeans. A demonstra

tion effect also occured; those neighbours

who acquired prized commodities had higher

status.

The agents who supplied these commodi

ties to rural Negeri Sembilan were the

Chinese merchants in cities, pekan and

village shops. Japanese merchants and

shops were also important in this respect.

Japanese products in particular became

cheap substitutes for European goods in

fulfilling the peasants' dreams of a "modern

life style." Japanese commodities began

to make significant inroads into Southeast

Asia during the First World War when

communication between Asia and Europe

was cut off. Imports of Japanese products,

famous for their cheap price, accelerated

further after the early 1930s [Koh and

Tanaka 1984; Shimizu 1988] . The


Source: Koh and Tanaka [1984: 391, Table 12]

Table 4 Japan's Share of Malayan Trade inSelected Items, 1935-1936

competitiveness of Japanese goods improved

greatly through the merciless rationalization

of industrial production during the de

pression period; Japan's export performance

was further helped in late 1931 when Japan

abandoned the gold standard, which had

only been reverted to in 1930, and let the

yen to depreciate against major foreign

currenCIes. Before 1937 when the second

anti-Japanese boycotts of the decade began

to take effect, Japan's control over some

sectors of Malayan imports was indeed

substantial (Table 4). According to the

remInISCenCes of old people In 1nas,

Japanese sundry goods such as textiles,

toys and "breakables" (pecah belah) were

well-known in Kuala Pilah.

Weekly fairs, established at the pekan

after the Great Depression by the colonial

government, were another important com

mercial channel.

These [weekly fairs] serve not only as

Item

Artificial Silk Piece Goods

Canned Sardines

Cement

Printed Cotton Piece Goods

Cotton Underwear

Crockery and Porcelain

Fancy Goods

Glass and Glassware

Hollow Ware

Household Cotton Goods(Made-up)

Rubber Shoes

Silk Piece Goods

Toys and Games

Cycle Tyres

1935(%)

90.093.947.157.468.466.591. 6

68.073.369.6

92.081. 4

59.882.5

1936(%)

88.195.041.159.559.862.371. 4

66.778.664.0

92.576.561. 0

71. 3

places for the sale by Malays of their

home-grown fruit and vegetables and

for the purchase by them of such hard

ware, cloth, crockery, cutlery and the like

as they want, but also for the transaction

of public business affecting the area

served by the fair, such as the issue of

rubber-export coupons, the collection

of land-rents, examination and adjudi

cation of exhibits of padi and rubber

brought in for mukim competitions

[i.e., padi, rubber or livestock shows to

encourage the improvement] in those

products.

These fairs were dominated by "local

[Chinese] shopkeepers and hawkers of

various nationalities," including "foreign

Malays" who set up stalls for songkok and

sarong. The existence of weekly fairs is

important when we think of the circulation

of commodities in rural N egeri Sembilan.

"[1]t is not now necessary to pay a visit

to the nearest town to purchase goods.

These can be obtained as cheaply at the

local weekly fair" (AR KP 1934, n.p.;

AR KP 1936, n.p.; AR KP 1937, n.p.).

The symbols of newly-found wealth in

the 1930s in rural Negeri Sembilan were

the three luxury items of the time: bicycles,

sewing machines and gramophones. There

is an indication that the distribution of

these items might have been much wider

than one would expect. The Research

Division of the Japanese Gunseikanbu in

Malaya (Malaya Military Headquarters)

conducted a household survey in Kampong

Kayu Ara of Mukim Ampang Tinggi and

Kampong Tengah of Mukim Sri Menanti,

139

Kuala Pilah. According to their survey

results, about 50% of the 275 households

surveyed in the two kampong possessed

bicycles, 25% sewing-machines, and 200/0

gramophones. (Another household item

included in the survey was a mosquito net,

which, although mostly not in good condi

tion, was owned by about 80% of the

households.)

These were the results obtained in 1943.

Being under the Japanese military occu

pation, this was certainly not the most

prosperous year in Malaya's history. By

this time, a number of people must have

already sold off their luxury items such as

gramophones to make ends meet. More

over, it is possible that some people might

have lied concerning the possession of

luxury items, especially bicycles, lest they

be a ppropriated by the military. Given

these possibilities, the above figures are

surprisingly high and indicative of the

prosperity enjoyed by the Malays of Negeri

Sembilan in general in the latter half of

the 1920s and especially in the 1930s, de

spite the economic hardships suffered by

the peasantry during the Great Depres

sion. 25 )

What brought this prosperity to N egeri

25) The interpretation of these results, however, isa little problematic. The survey involves 44Chinese and 7 Indian households yet no racialbreakdown is given in presenting the surveyresults. Twenty-two Chinese were vegetablecultivators who had been coolies in "rubbergardens" before the war. Eighteen Chineseand seven Indians worked in "other occupations," including as shop owners, itinerantmerchants, lowly officials and coolies; nobreakdown of "other occupations" is given.None of the Chinese and Indians owned rubberland, while over fifty percent of the Malay

140

Sembilan, and probably Western Malaya

in general, was rubber. Winstedt [1950:

134-135] once commented:

British science, too, introducing new

forms of cultivation, especially rubber

that requires no large capital expendi

ture, brought him [the Malay] the

novelty of an income so far above his

households owned smallholdings with anaverage size of 3 acres 1 rod 38 poles. (Thissize is slightly larger than that of !nas. SeeTable 2.) I speculate that the luxury itemsmentioned here were mostly owned by Malaysmallholders. According to the same survey,smallholders and share-tappers in the twokampong enjoyed a relatively high degree ofeconomic prosperity before the war. Theaverage annual income of smallholders witha land area of 5 acres 2 rods amounted to about$ 500 in 1940; that of share-tappers was $ 156.See Marai Gunseikanbu Chousabu 1@*.i&~'$IDa11!t '$ [Malay Military HeadquartersResearch DivisionJ, Chousabu-hou Dai-NigouIDa11!t'$¥Iit~=~ [Research Division Report No.2], 15 May 1944, and Nanpou Gunseisoukanbu Chousabu m:1J1JLi!&*~~ -$~ 1!t '$[Southern Military Central Headquarters Re-search Division], Souchou-shi Dai-Juurokugou~IDa1Jf~+A~ (October 1943) Marai NousonSeikatsu-no Jittai (Chuukan Houkoku) ~*.#~m/ • ~ (r:f:t FdI ¥lit*) [Research Division Material No. 16 (October 1943) Conditions of Life in Malay Village (An InterimReport)]. In comparison with the annualincomes of smallholders and share-tappers, themonthly salaries of teacher trainees and teachersat the Government English School in KualaPilah were respectively about $90 and $130 inthe mid-1920s [Mohamad Yusoff 1983: 122J,while European-made bicycles and Japanesemade ones cost about $60 and $14 each in 1933[Koh and Tanaka 1984: 379, Table 5].Apparently smallholders often made moremoney than Malay school teachers in the latterhalf of the 1930s; one old man in Inas told methat he quit being a Malay school teacherbecause he could make more money fromrubber cultivation.


daily needs that he could build a sub

stantial house and buy cycles and

gramophones and cars.

Bauer, who wrote a report on the impact of

the International Rubber Regulation

Agreement in Malaya, also observed:

Yet Malaya's specialisation in rubber

and tin had real advantages. It was

agreed by all observers that in the late

1920's the standard of living of all classes

in Malaya was far higher than in India,

Ceylon or the rice-producing countries of

South-east Asia. ... To quote one

authority, Mr. C. A. Vlieland in his

Report on the 1931 Malayan Census

refers to the material benefits which the

varied races living in Malay[a] derived

from the commercial prosperity of the

country. Economically, Malaya was

a veritable Eldorado (Vlieland's expres

sion) to the poorest masses of South and

South-east Asia. 'So it comes about

that there is a continuous stream of

immigrants from China, India, Java.

coming to seek their fortunes in Malaya

The benefits derived by the Malays

were reflected in housing and health

standards and in material possessions,

including occasionally a motor-car.

[Bauer 1948: 20]

These comments, especially that of

Winstedt, do smack of colonial paternalism.

Furthermore, the expansion of rubber

smallholding, with the concomitant pene

tration of the money economy, widened the

gap between the "haves" and the "have-

nots" among Malay peasants and made all

of them more vulnerable to overseas

economic depressions. Nevertheless, there

is no denying that the material culture of

Malay villagers in N egeri Sembilan im

proved a great deal within a short span of

twenty to thirty years in the early twentieth

century. And rubber smallholding, which

was actually often discouraged and even

discriminated against by the colonial

government, was more or less directly

responsible for this.

IX Rice and Rubber

William Maxwell once wrote about the

Negeri Sembilan Malays of the 1880s in

the following way:

A purely agricultural life requires that

the cultivator be satisfied with poor fare

and that his style of living be simple,

modest and economical. As satisfying

these conditions the Malays of Negri

Sembilan are an almost an ideal peasantry

[sic]. Their methods of cultivation are

excellent, they preserve their ancient

habits and traditions and they are

satisfied with little. In Malacca where

Malays are good cultivators and much

attached to the fields, cultivation is only

one of a man's means of livelihood.

The same may be said of the Malays of

Province Wellesley, Penang and of some

places in the Malay States. (quoted in

AR KP 1912, p. 4)

Apparently cultivation here refers to nce

cultivation. Rice planting In Negeri

141

Sembilan, according to more recent com

mentators, is supposed to have been

"hallowed by tradition" [Gullick 1951: 45],

and supported by "the moral value of rice

cultivation" [Swift 1965: 42] and "the

ideology of rice" [Lewis 1976: 78-80].

These observations notwithstanding, the

possible adverse effects of money-earning

opportunities on rice cultivation were already

being noted in the late 1880s: "With the

present facility for earning money in other

directions, the difficulty will be to keep the

people to the regular cultivation of their

fields" (NS AR 1889, p. 8). This possi

bility was already a reality around 1910

when the creation of new rubber estates

provided Malays with opportunities for

wage labour.

Whilst the failure of the crop in 1911 was,

in the main, due to lack of rain and to

sickness among the Malay population,

there is but little doubt that padi-planting

tends to decline in popularity, for such is

the demand for labour that the Malay

finds that he can earn high wages and

afford to buy rice instead of growing it.(NS AR 1911, p. 5)

In fact, the cultivated sawah areas

shrank dramatically in Negeri Sembilan in

1911 (see Table 5 on page 150). Yet, the

District Officer of Kuala Pilah was still

confident in 1912 of the basic disposition of

the Malays of Negeri Sembilan towards

rice-growing.

Still the Kuala Pilah Malay lives in

a style, simple, modest and economical;

142

. . . The men have no scope to become

fishermen; little scope and no inclination

to work for wages; they are padi planters

first, secondly cultivators of kampong and

beyond that nothing, unless one except

a very few special callings such as lembaga

[clan head], pawang [village magician],

kathi [Islamic official], goldsmith,

bullock-carter and so on. (AR KP

1912, pp. 4-5)

Likewise the Negri Sembilan Adminis

tration Report for the year 1917 still

sounded wistfully hopeful about Malay

committment to rice cultivation, although

the cultivated sawah acreage in the state

remained relatively low in that year (see

Table 5).

Padi planting has for generations been

the chief· industry of Negri Sembilan

Malays and (except of .late years in the

Seremban and Coast Districts) the quan

tity harvested has always, at any rate in

normal years, been sufficient for the

settled population. The craze for rubber

planting among the Malays certainly

led to some falling off in the production,

but the process never went very far and

the fall in the price of rubber last year

and the increase in the price of rice has

done much to counteract the tendency to

neglect the rice fields. (NS AR 1917, p. 5)

No matter how ideal a peasantry the

Malays of Negeri Sembilan may have been

in the 1880s, it became increasingly obvious,

as the last quotation suggests, that padi

planting was adversely affected by high


rubber prices. This oscillating, inverse

relationship between rice cultivation and

rubber prices had become a well-established

pattern by the 1920s. Thus, in 1925 when

rubber prices were very high, "The pros

perity of the majority of the small holders

appears to have had a bad effect generally

on the planting of padi, admittedly, hard

work and risky" (AR KP 1925, p. 5).

Yet, in 1931, "The depression in the price

of rubber led to greater keeness in planting

up .all available [padi] land" (NS AR

1931, p. 8). And, still, several years later,

"It is thought that the chief reason for this

[existence of uncultivated sawah] was the

high price of rubber at the time when

planting became due: it cannot be denied

that a usual result in this district of a high

price of small-holders' rubber is a certain

reluctance on the part of sawah-owners to

plant their padi-fields." In fact, in the

year in question, "The estimated area of

sawah left wholly uncultivated was ap

proximately 1[,]550 acres out of a total of

nearly 18,000 acres in the whole district

[of Kuala Pilah]" (AR KP 1937, n.p.).

Here emerges the forerunner of sawah

terbiar or abandoned rice fields, a serious

problem in contemporary Negeri Sembilan.

The colonial government was more than

unhappy about this development. They,

especially after experiencing difficulty in

importing rice during the First World War,

tried to discourage Malay rubber small

holding and, instead, encourage rice culti

vation [Winstedt 1950: 125-126]. "Since

the early 1920's rubber production by

smallholders has been strongly discouraged

by the authorities in many different ways,

and official pressure was always exercised

in favour of food production and against

rubber growing" [Bauer 1948: 64].

Government efforts were in no way success

ful. Some colonial officials were clearly

aware of futility of their policies.

The benefits of rubber growing for

smallholders are also well understood by

Malayan administrators familiar with

conditions in smallholdings. ... These

administrators also pointed out that with

the pre-war technique (in the absence of

mechanisation) padi growing was a most

thankless pursuit over most of central

and southern Malaya. [loco cit.]

There are several reasons why rubber

cultivation was in general preferred to rice

cultivation by the Malay villagers [Bauer

1948: 60-62]. First of all, rubber culti

vation, as the above quotation suggests,

was more lucrative than rice cultivation if

productive value per acre was compared in

monetary terms. This was true even in

1932 when rubber prices hit the bottom

during the Great Depression. Except for

the initial stage of planting, rubber culti

vation required far less investment for its

continuing operation than rice cultivation.

Local rubber markets were numerous and

competitive; rubber was a more saleable

commodity than rice. Rubber tapping was

less influenced by weather factors, while

rice cultivation was more susceptible to

the whims of the weather and other

calamities. Moreover, rubber tapping was

far easier work than rice cultivation. Thus,

Bauer [ibid.: 62-63] concludes:

143

Finally, rubber growing entails much

less hard work than padi culture. In

stead of toiling in the mud of a wet padi

field sometimes for days on end, the

Malay rubber-grower rarely had to work

more than three or four hours a day, and

could take a day or a week off whenever

he wished. ... Rubber tapping is

among the least exacting forms of work

in tropical agriculture, especially where

great care is not demanded.

Given these overriding advantages of

rubber against rice, advantages which to

some extent were enjoyed by smallholders

even during the Great Depression, it is

actually surprising that rubber cultivation

did not lead to the quick disappearance of

rice cultivation. Despite the fact that the

relationship between the two crops was

like a seesaw whose balance was tipped in

either direction by rubber prices, that is,

cultivated sawah contracted or recovered

according to rubber prices, yet most of

sawah was cult'ivated even during the time

of high rubber prices.

There are certainly many factors involved

in the resilience of rice cultivation: "peasant

conservatism," concern with obtaining rice

for self-consumption, interest in securing

hedges against falling rubber prices,

British regulations prohibiting the con

version of sawah to rubber smallholdings,

and matrilineal adat with its high regard

for sawah as ancestral property. These

factors may all have been important in this

respect. The fact that there is no ecological

competition between sawah. and rubber

lots also allows a flexible relationship

144

between the two. Different requirements

in work schedules for rice and rubber are

another important factor. Rice cultivation

imposes a relatively well-regulated work

schedule. In particular the timing of land

preparation and planting is crucial in rice

cultivation. Rubber tapping on the other

hand imposes practically no work schedule,

as long as it is carried out in the morning.

It does not effect the rubber trees adversely

if no tapping is done.

But there is another decisive reason for

the persistence of rice cultivation. The

establishment of the seesaw relationship

between rice and rubber was accompanied

by an increasing male preoccupation with

rubber tapping and their decreasing involve

ment in rice cultivation. To be sure, the

major burden of rice cultivation always

seems to have fallen on women more than

on men in Negeri Sembilan. For example,

the District Officer of Kuala Pilah made

the following remark in 1912:

A glaring side-light on social problems

was thrown by a Malay whom I ques

tioned on the tendency here of Malay

women to follow Chinese, expecting to

hear an outburst of racial or religious

indignation: 'it is very hard, tuan,' said

he, 'for it is the reason why padz' ta'boleh

jadz" [padi cannot be successful] 1['] Such

comment is as genuinely unconscious as

the present of a changkul [hoe] to a bride I

But it shows how the men have so much

time and energy to spend on debating

tribal offices and tribal customs. (AR

KP 1912, p. 3)


According to matrilineal adat, sawah to

gether with houses and kampong (home

steads) generally belong to women; this

may partly explain the major role played by

women m nce cultivation m N egeri

Sembilan.

Even given this long-standing tendency,

the spread of rubber cultivation seems to

have further provoked men's dissociation

from nce cultivation, as evinced by the

following comments made in the mid

1910s. "The total [cultivated sawah area

in N egeri Sembilan] shows a small increase,

but the native Malay population is far too

engrossed in planting rubber to take much

interest in opening up new sawahs, and the

care of the fields is being to an increasing

extent left to the women." "Where the

[padi] crop was a poor one, the reason was

solely and purely neglect. In Juasseh

especially the work was left entirely to the

women, and the people gave me the

impression that they planted in order to

escape a prosecution but did not care

whether they got padi or not" (NS AR

1916, p. 6; AR KP 1916, p. 6).26)

There is an indication that even during

the time of low rubber prices men may have

26) Another possible indication of male dissociationfrom rice cultivation is the disappearance ofthe cattle-driven plough in Inas in the 1920sand 1930s; ploughing was men's work.However, there are stories that the iron-tippedplough was introduced from Malacca to Inasonly in the early twentieth century. In general,there are conflicting pieces of informationconcerning the existence of plough in NegeriSembilan. For example, Hill [1977: 133] isnegative but Rathborne [1984: 54] is positiveabout it, provided his description refers to NegeriSembilan. (His reference to ploughing appears

after he describes characteristics of Malays who

been reluctant to go back to rice cultivation

but, instead, looked for other cash-earning

activities. Probably referring to the results

of the "smallholdings enquiry" which was

conducted in Malaya in 1931-1933, Bauer

[1948: 59] observes: "During the worst

period of the slump the smallholdings were

often tapped by the dependants of the

owner, who himself went out fishing or

woodcutting." If this observation IS

applicable to N egeri Sembilan, the usual

recovery of cultivated sawah areas during

the time of low rubber prices was accom

plished more by the appropriate mobili

zation of female labour than by the

transference of male labour from rubber

tapping to rice cultivation. Particulary

crucial must have been the sufficient recruit

ment of female labour in time for land

preparation and planting.

What I am suggesting here IS this: the

spread of rubber smallholding in Negeri

Sembilan created not only the seesaw

relationship between rubber and rice but

also an increasing division of labour by sex,

that is, rubber tapping for men and rice

cultivation for women. Admittedly, this

division was not rigid, as the above

quotation indicates. It is known that

women (and children) often tapped rubber

around the settlements and in times of

came to work for him at Gunung Berembun.)A few old people in Inas told me that thewooden plough existed before the arrival of theiron-tipped one. I may add here that sawahin Rembau were prepared by wooden hoes inthe 1880s [Hervey 1884: 256], indicating thatwooden tools were not unusual but ploughseither wooden or iron-tipped were not common,at least in Rembau, during this time.

145

a male labour shortage. 27) Yet, this

division of labour was observable even in

the latter half of the 1950s [Lewis 1962;

Swift 1965J and in the mid-1960s, and is

still discernible today.28)

There are several reasons for the male

preoccupation with rubber cultivation.

Male labour, to begin with, was a determin

ing factor in carving smallholdings out of

the forest. Male interest in rubber culti

vation was especially strong in Negeri

Sembilan because rubber gardens were the

most important, and in many ways, the only

economic assest that men could own under

matrilineal adat; sawah, houses, and

homesteads in the village generally belonged

27) Referring to the pre-war situation in Malayain general, Bauer [1948: 7] says: "The rubbertrees in and around the villages [settlements] areoften tapped by the wife and children of thesmallholder." Rubber was also often tappedby women during the Emergency: "Theshortage of tappers on small-holdings continuesand much of the work is done by women: theyouths and able-bodied men having joined theSecurity Forces" (NS AR 1949, p. 14).During my research in Inas, I received theimpression that share-tapping was common(in recent years?) among women from poorhouseholds who were usually divorced orwidowed. The widening total acreage of sawahterbiar (abandoned sawah) and the increasingout-migration of the younger generation gohand in hand with this tendency. These womenusually combine both rice cultivation and sharetapping.

28) The Third-Quarter Agricultural Report ofNegeri Sembilan of 1965 makes the followingcomment on this point: "What is troublesome(merunsingkan) in Negeri Sembilan concernsthe condition and cultivation methods ofsawah. Sawah are very small and ownedby women and mostly worked by women" (mytranslation from Malay) (see Penyata SukutahunYang Ketiga 1965, Jabatan Pertanian Negeri,Negeri Sembilan, p. 3).

146

to women according to adat and in practice.

A predominantly large proportion of rubber

smallholdings in Malaya were generally

located away from the settlements' [Bauer

1948: 6], so it was more difficult for women

to commute, especially carrying heavy

rubber loads on their way back. Bicycles

were later introduced into the village as a

means of transportation but it was not

considered proper for village women to ride

them.

The above division of labour by sex is

important because it follows the more

general and long-standing pattern of the

cash economy mainly in the hand of men

and the subsistence economy mainly in the

hand of women. Even before wage labour

on cassava estates and rubber smallholdings

became common, the collection of forest

products and the rearing of cattle, two of

the major cash-generating activities in

nineteenth-century Negeri Sembilan, were

carried out by men. Rathborne [1984: 54]

makes the following observation concerning

the Malay division of labour by sex, most

probably referring to the situation in Negeri

Sembilan in the 1880s.

The women cook, carry water, see to the

house, and work in the fields, where a

great proportion of the manual labour

is done by them. The men, when at

home, build and keep their houses in

repair, collect rattan from the neighbour

ing jungle, do all the fencing requisite,

make traps for catching fish and game,

and seek for forest fruits and edible roots.

They attend to the buffaloes and drive

them when ploughing, for these animals


are somewhat dangerous to handle,. . .29)

The emergence of rubber practically

everywhere in Negeri Sembilan amplified

this cash-subsistence bifurcation between

the sexes. By providing mainly men with

a relatively steady and often extremely

remunerative source of cash, rubber culti

vation must have strengthened men's

entrenchment and specialization in the cash

economy, while increasingly confining

women to the subsistence sector. In this

connection it is interesting to observe that

daily shopping in Inas is even now mainly

carried out by husbands, not by wives. 30)

One implication of these observations is

that the continuing cultivation of sawah in

Negeri Sembilan basically hinges on the

29) Note that Rathborne qualifies his description ofmale role with the phrase "when at home."This again suggests that it was not uncommon

for men to go away on circular migration at thetime. This is the passage which I previouslymentioned in which Rathborne refers to

ploughing in Negeri Sembilan.30) The fact that the pekan were and still are far

away from the settlements also accounts for thisshopping practice. Motorbikes are commonnowadays in Inas but it is not yet consideredproper for women to ride them alone. Incomparison with their counterparts inMinangkabau society of West Sumatra, NegeriSembilan women had less access to a moneyeconomy in the nineteenth century and evenin the early twentieth century. It was common

in West Sumatra in the latter half of thenineteenth century for women to be active as

traders in the local markets. Since the latenineteenth century they were also involved inproducing handicrafts such as embroideredgoods for the market. The Chinese domination of pekan in Malaya was a major factorin the relative lack of involvement of NegeriSembilan women and men in commercialactivities.

combination of women's committment to

rice cultivation and their access to cash.

As their access to cash increases, their

committment to rice cultivation probably

decreases.

Rubber-tapping husbands did give some

cash to their wives. But cash was earned

in tapping usually on a daily or a weekly

basis; being influenced by market prices

the amount earned was not stable; and no

cash was earned if it rained or if the

husbands felt like spending the morning in

a village coffee shop. Husbands mayor

may not give money to their wives, de

pending on their whims or on the state

of their pockets. Thus rubber-tapping

husbands could never be relied upon by

their wives as a source of cash. An added

factor here were high divorce rates. The

prevalence of divorce tied women to rice

cultivation, for it served as an economic

buffer in case of divorce, not to mention

low rubber prices.

As "makan gaji" (salaried) occupations

have become common among men and, to

some extent, among women, as urban and

rural migration (the latter mainly to

FELDA Schemes) has intensified, as urban

rural remittances have multiplied, and as

marriages have become more enduring

(changes all noticeable SInce the New

Economic Policy), women have become

less and less involved in rice cultivation.

Salaries, dependents' allowances for govern

ment employees, pensions, and even monthly

remittances from children established in the

cities are far more reliable sources of cash

for women than the earnings of rubber

tapping husbands in bygone days. Two

147

expressions of the increasing female dis

sociation from rice cultivation are the

increasing areas of sawah terbiar and the

prevalence of z·bu sen" 1'umah ("fulltime"

housewives) among married women in

Inas.

X Diminishing Forest andAgricultural Rituals

Rice cultivation in Inas used to be

associated with a series of ritual activities

[Lewis 1962; Kato 1988]. There were

two types of agricultural rituals in Inas:

community-wide rituals which involved the

participation of the' entire luhak (adat

district), and household-based rituals which

Were carried out separately by each house

hold. The beginning, middle (pre-harvest

period) and end of a rice cultivation cycle

were demarcated by community-wide

rituals. Household rituals were performed

in association with such activities as sowing

seeds in a seed-bed or transplanting

seedlings. These rituals enhanced com

munal solidarity and at the same time

made rice cultivation more than simply

a means of livelihood.

Through agricultural rituals, the villagers

tried to negotiate good relationship between

humans and the forest spirits. Spirits,

which might be harmful to rice and humans,

also resided in sawah but they were believed

to have come from the forest via the water

ways. One function of the agricultural

rituals at the beginning of the rice culti

vation cycle, which usually took place at

the headwaters, was to expell evil spirits

downstream. A special spirit that medi-

148

ated the relationship between humans and

rice was semangat padi or the rice spirit.

If the relationship was well maintained

through the proper performance of agri

cultural rituals, the semangat padi stayed

with humans and produced a good harvest.

If not, she (semangat padi) fled and as

a consequence humans suffered from a poor

harvest.

According to some old people in Inas,

agricultural rituals, especially the com

munity-wide rituals, began to disappear

in the late 1930s, precisely the period when

rubber cultivation assumed a decisively

important economic role in Inas. A similar

observation was also reported from

Seremban in the same period: "In days

gone by padi-planting was attended by

various ceremonies at the different stages.

This ritual has to some extent now been

abandoned, but the old methods of hus

bandry still persist" (AR SB 1937, pp. 3-4).

Soon after the 1930s came the Japanese

occupation and the Emergency; and in

neither period was the social situation

conducive to the survival or revival of elabo

rate agricultural rituals. There are signs

that some of the household-based rituals

survived until the late 1950s [Lewis 1962:

305-311]. Yet the introduction of new

rice varieties in the mid-1960s rendered

even these rituals less meaningful. As

one elder told me, these new varieties,

which have not been handed down from

earlier generations, do not have any

semangat padi.

One reason for the disappearance of

community-wide rituals was men's decreas

ing involvement in rice cultivation. Unlike


N

t"",----

//

'"//

////'/'//~rc=~~t~~~~II

lkm

Map 3 Inas (ca. 1958)

I~...~I Ricefields

Houses

~ Rivers

To Tampin18.4km

household-based rituals which were mainly

performed by women, community-wide

rituals were generally organized and carried

out by men. As men became more

involved in rubber cultivation, they must

have lost interest in organizing agricultural

rituals as well as participating in rice

cultivation itself.

Mounting Islamic opposition was an

other important factor here. Opposition to

agricultural rituals began to appear among

Islamic teachers as early as the late

nineteenth century [Blagden 1896: 11].

As already mentioned, rubber cultivation

most likely contributed to the enhancement

of Islamic consciousness among the Malays.

Accordingly, Islamic teachers were increas

ingly vocal through the 1920s and 1930s

in their opposition to agricultural rituals,

Source: Lewis [1962: 24]

which incorporated the pre-Islamic belief

system and were supervised by the pawang

(village magician) [Abdullah 1927: 310;

Gullick 1987: 130, 321-323].

As can be understood from the above

description of community-wide rituals, one

element central to the Malay belief system

as well as to the agricultural rituals was the

forest. Schematically speaking, the Malay

settlements in Negeri Sembilan developed

along the valleys. Wet lands near the

river on the valley floor were turned into

sawah, while natural levees became home

steads (for the example of Inas, see Map 3).

On the lower valley slopes were planted

fruit trees, dry padi, and, in the late

nineteenth century, sometimes coffee and

other cash crops (cf., Hill [1977: 130, 138]).

This "artificial space," a precarious token

149

of human settlement, was a mere island in

the vast sea of forest. The forest in the

Malay belief system was not simply

a collection of huge trees. It was inhabited

by good as well as evil spirits; it was feared

and awed; it was considered to be a source

of potent power. Consequently, human

contact with the forest, whether in the form

of felling trees or collecting forest products,

always required a ritual mediation.

The above situation began to change as

rubber cultivation spread In Negeri

Sembilan. Vast tracts of forest were cut

down. Before the Chinese started making

planks out of the felled trees, probably

around the 1900s at the earliest, they were

simply burned after they had been left dry.

Rathborne [1984: 72] describes such a scene

when he opened a· coffee estate in Gunung

Berembun in the 1880s:

It is a glorious sight to see the whole

hillside ablaze, and the fire and sparks

leaping up, whilst listening to the roar

and crackle of the flames; and for days

afterwards the embers glow and simmer.

To call it a glorious sight is a white man's

reaction. One could only guess what the

Malays must have felt, seeing the once

awe-inspiring and seemingly invincible

forest being mercilessly cut down and then

unceremoniously set afire, which were all

accomplished without apparent retributions.

One estimate puts the total sawah areas

in Negeri Sembilan in 1891 at about

19,423 acres [Hill 1977: 127]. For

argument's sake let us say that before the

introduction of cassava and rubber, that is,

150

in the early 1870s, the ratio between sawah

and non-sawah agricultural lands in Negeri

Sembilan was one to one. If we use the

1891 figure for sawah areas as our baseline,

this would mean that at most the entire

agricultural land, inclusive of sawah, in

Negeri Sembilan In the early 1870s

amounted to 40,000 acres. This constituted

roughly 2.5% of the total land area in Negeri

Sembilan.31) Even including settlements,

towns, mining areas and grazing grounds

for cattle, one can see from this calculation

that practically the whole of Negeri

Sembilan was covered by forest before the

introduction of cassava and rubber.

In comparison, Table 5 shows how rapid

was the onslaught of rubber against the

forest in Negeri Sembilan. By 1939 about

Table 5 Rubber and Sawah Areas in N egeriSembilan

(in acres)

Rubber Sawah

1903 6,188 31,1201906 15,103 32,4751909 40,883 33,9541911 189,409 17,4401917 220,000 26.4001929 341,848 33,1871939 396,065 34,730

Sources: Peletz [1988: 140]; NS AR (1911. 4. ix);NS AR (1917. 3); NS AR (1929. 15); NSAR (1939.4)

31) In 1939 the ratio between sawah and non-sawahagricultural areas excluding rubber lots was10 to 6.4. Thus, the assumption of a one toone ratio is considerably higher than this figure.The total land areas, inclusive of agriculturalareas and forests, in Negeri Sembilan amountedto about 1.632,000 acres in 1939 (NS AR 1939.p. 4). This is the figure used for the abovecalculation.


a quarter of the land area of the state was

under cultivation and 870/0 of the cultivated

areas were planted with rubber (NS AR

1939, p. 4).32) Furthermore, the expansion

of rubber cultivation was accompanied by

the development of transportation systems.

Thus forests were not only cut down for

rubber but were also scarred by roads and

railways.

The location of rubber smallholdings

vis-a-vis the village also had important

implications for the diminishing forest.

Smallholdings were generally located along

the slopes of the valley. In general, they

literally surrounded homesteads and sawah,

that is, the "artificial space" in the sea of

forest. Rubber smallholdings became a

wedge between humans and the forest.

As rubber cultivation expanded, the gap

opened by the wedge widened. Signifi

cantly, rubber plots are considered by

Malays to be ritually neutral zones.

Villagers perform a special ritual when

clearing the forest. However, once the

cleared lot is planted with rubber, no more

rituals will be held there even when the

rubber trees are cut down for replanting.

Thus the expansion of smallholdings meant

the expansion of the ritually neutral zone

between humans and sawah on one hand,

and the forest on the other.

Aside from their ecological impact, one

32) Before the introduction of rubber, the invasionof the forest by cassava was already substantial.It is estimated that over 100,000 acres of landin Negeri Sembilan were occupied by cassavaestates by the turn of the century, most of themalready planted with cassava [Jackson 1968 :68]. Abandoned cassava estates were eventu

ally turned into rubber estates.

possible implication of these changes was

the Malay's increasing reluctance to believe

in the efficacy of agricultural rituals and in

the potency of the forest and forest spirits in

general. The spiritual as well as ecological

environment of the villagers began to

change significantly.

Whatever the reasons behind the disap

pearance of agricultural rituals, it meant for

people of Inas a decline in the cultural

meaning of rice cultivation. Stripped of its

sociocultural significance, rice cultivation

ceased to be a way of life and instead

became a means of livelihood.

Anatomy of Malay Smallholdingand Rubber Tapping

Throughout this paper I have used the

term "cultivation" in relation to Malay

rubber smallholdings. Yet the term

"cultivation" is most inappropriate for this

purpose. To understand why this is the

case is to come to grips with the nature of

Malay rubber smallholding and its wider

sodal implications.

"Cultivation" among Malay rubber

smallholders was generally limited to the

initial stage of opening a lot, that is, cutting

down forest trees, burning them after they

had dried, clearing the ground and planting

seedlings. After this, usually minimum

attention was paid to the lot until the trees

started bearing, generally within six years

of planting. Once the trees reached the

bearing stage, tapping was more or less the

only activity undertaken by the Malays.

Thus, tapping, not cultivation, is a more

appropriate description of Malay behaviour

151

in the context of rubber.

The lack of cultivation efforts was

reflected in the phenomenon of self-sown

seedlings which were usually left to grow on

Malay smallholdings. 33) Another mani

festation of the same tendency was observed

in the question of replanting. (Replanting

of smallholdings, especially Malay small

holdings, became a real issue only after the

Second World War. Trees in smallholdings

were not yet old enough before this time.)

The Annual Report of 1964 by the Negeri

Sembilan Agricultural Department points

out the "old age" of rubber trees in the

state: "Malay smallholdings are in a be

wildering state. Most of their trees are

already old and very unproductive" (my

translation from Malay). 34) Yet, system

atic replanting was seldom carried out by

the Malays. Instead, self-sown seedlings

oftentimes functioned as "automatic re

planting."

I t should be pointed out that socio~

economic factors were important in the

question of replanting. Malays seldom

possessed adequate capital to finance re

planting. Clearing the lot, planting it

with seedlings, and, above all, enriching the

soil of the old rubber lot with fertilizer all

required a substantial investment. Even

if a smallholder managed to replant his

33) According to Bauer [1948: 103], this wascommon throughout the East and especiallyso in the Netherlands East Indies. It is possiblethat self-sown seedlings were better controlled inMalaya than in the Netherlands East Indies,as was generally the case with various otheraspects of smallholdings.

34) See Penyata Tanunan bagi Tanun 1964,Jabatan Pertanian Negeri, Negeri Sembilan,p.2.

152

rubber lot, he then had to forgo the income

from rubber tapping until the trees reached

the bearing stage, that is, for about six

years. One way of overcoming this

problem was to replant a holding by

sections but this was usually not practicable

because of the small size of Malay 10ts. 35 )

Joint ownership through inheritance was

not unusual among Malay smallholders.

This presented another problem because it

was not easy for the joint owners to reach

a consensus about replanting [Bauer 1948:

173-175; Barlow 1978: 233-234].

In addition to these socioeconomic

factors, there may have been another factor

involved in the lack of replanting activities

among Malay smallholders. Hevea brasi

liensis, which originally grew wild in the

Brazilian forest, was accepted by Malays

more as a forest tree than as a cultivated

crop. The characteristics of Hevea

brasiliensis were instrumental in promoting

this kind of acceptance. This point should

become clear when we compare rubber with

other cash crops such as sugar cane, tobacco

and coffee.

The above-mentioned cash crops demand

more or less regular care and cultivation

efforts, for example, weeding, replanting

after some interval, and processing the

yield. In contrast, Hevea brasiliensis is

35) Another solution to the same problem was toopen a new smallholding instead of replantingthe old one. The cash outlay for smallholderswas smaller for new planting than for replanting.In this way the smallholder could also continueto draw income by tapping the old lot untilthe new one started producing. However,this option was not easily available to Malaysduring the colonial period due to the governmentrestrictions against new alienation after 1922.


a very easy plant to deal with. Cultivation

requirements are minimal after the trees

have been planted and especially after they

reach maturity. Yet the rubber trees canproduce, with little care, for twenty-five to

thirty years or even longer. Trees or the

latex they contain do not suffer damage even

if the trees are neglected. 36) Processing of

the yield is not difficult and the product,

rubber sheet, does not spoil.

Once planted, rubber trees are always

there to be tapped, just as forest products

are always there somewhere in the forest

to be extracted. Moreover, rubber trees,

just like forest products, or perhaps even

more so than forest products, scarcely im

pose their biological rhythm on humans.

One can tap them or extract them more or

less whenever one wants to. The initiative

and timing of work are dictated not by

plants but by human need, will and whim.

In this sense, the tapping of rubber must

have easily fitted the pre-existing Malay

work habits of extracting forest products.

I previously quoted the following com

ment made by Bauer [1948: 63]: "Rubber

tapping is among the least exacting forms

of work in tropical agriculture, especially

where great care is not demanded." Yet

rubber tapping is also among the least

enjoyable works in tropical agriculture.

No cooperative work is involved in rubber

tapping, nor is any ritual festivity associated

36) Neglect actually can be beneficial to the treesas it gives them a resting period. I was oftentold in Inas that the latex yield after the SecondWorld War was very good because trees werenot tapped at all during the Japanese occupationdue to the lack of a market.

with it. I t is a lonely operation carried out

in an enclosed atmosphere. While tapping,

one can see only rows and rows of rubber

trees and nothing else. The pleasure ofwitnessing a plant grow is alien to rubber

tapping. Unlike the act of looking for

forest products, no sense of adventure,

mystery, anxiety, joyful discovery or even

disappointment of non-discovery is involved

in it.

Malays usually tap about 300 to 350

trees within a few hours. One makes

a round of trees, cuts incisions, puts a

receptacle for latex at its proper place,

and then, after one round is over, makes

another round of the same trees, this time

emptying the latex into a pail. 37) Rubber

tapping consists of the repetition of the same

routine day in and day out. Latex thus

collected is useless by itself. Practically

no self-consumption is possible, nor can it

be consumed even locally. Thus rubber

tapping is labour to be endured purely for

money-making. If rubber is a cash crop

par excellence, rubber tapping is a mone

tary pursuit par excellence. Considering

the pragmatic, matter-of-fact nature of the

activities involved, it is perhaps not sur

prising that no ritual is associated with

rubber tapping or rubber cultivation.

Rubber tapping can also be contrasted

37) In recent years, the second round is generally

omitted to simplify the procedure; the collectionof latex (scrap rubber) is postponed until thefollowing morning when tappers make a freshround of the trees to cut new incisions. Theycan in this way kill two birds with one stone, soto speak. The latex in the receptacle will bediluted if it rains in the afternoon but the tappers

nowadays are willing to take this risk.

153

in many ways with nce cultivation. (Of

course, some of the contrasts between rubber

and other cash crops apply here too.)

There is practically no season for tapping;

it can be carried out all year round. If

one needs and wants to do so, one can even

tap trees every day unless it rains. (It is

not practical to tap on rainy days because

the latex will not run along the incision to

the receptacle.) Or conversely, one may

not tap at all, even for months on end, if

rubber prices are low or simply if one does

not feel like tapping. Better still, the

resumption of tapping after a long rest

involves no preparatory work, except per

haps for clearing some of the undergrowth

between the trees in the neglected lot.

This switch-on-switch-off characteristic of

rubber tapping gives it a free and easy

quality. The fruits of the tapping en

deavour can be exchanged with money in

a short interval, even daily. Rubber is

like a deposit made in trees which can be

drawn up at will. It may be likened to

a "savings account on roots."

In contrast to rubber, indigenous varieties

of rice are harvested only once a year.

Consequently, nce cultivation requires

economic planning at least on a one-year

basis in order to sustain the cultivator from

one harvest to another. Rice cultivation

also imposes a certain regimentation in work

and time schedules according to the growth

stages of the rice. These characteristics

lead to the general observation in rice

growing societies that household-based

festivities, such as wedding ceremonies, are

better put off until the harvest is over.

As Geertz [1968] points out in outlining

154

the concept of agricultural involution,

there is generally a positive relationship

between the amount of work put into rice

cultivation and the amount of rice harvested.

There is no such relationship in rubber

tapping. A greater amount of effort in

tapping does produce a greater amount of

latex collected. Unlike rice, however,

latex is useless unless it is exchanged for

money. It is not infrequent that the

amount of money earned depends more on

the market price of rubber than on the input

level of human endeavour. The disjunc

tion between effort spent and money earned

is magnified because of frequent and widely

oscillating fluctuations in rubber prices.

In sum, the above characteristics of

rubber cultivation and smallholding patterns

greatly influence the economic behaviour

of the Malay villagers involved in rubber

tapping. For example, the idea of rubber

as a forest product and the disjunction

between physical endeavour and monetary

gain are not conducive to replanting efforts.

The disjunction between endeavour and

money and the unattractive nature as well as

the ease of stopping and starting rubber

tapping are not in any way supportive of an

"ethic of hard work." Furthermore, these

factors, as well as the half-day work

schedule, are not likely to lead to speciali

zation in rubber tapping as a profession;

these characteristics are more congenial to

the practice of combining diverse economic

pursuits commonly observed among the

Malays in the pre-rubber period [Barlow

1978: 225]. As one official of the Farmers'

Cooperative of Pekan Johol, himself a

Malay, commented somewhat critically to


me, the Malays of N egeri Sembilan like to

have "kerja rojak" or a combination of

various economic pursuits. (Rojak is a dish

of mixed fruit or vegetables eaten with

sauce.) Rubber tapping exactly fits this bill.

Money earned through tapping is unlikely

to be saved, for extra money can always

be earned at any time through further

tapping, that is, tapping the "savings

account on roots."

What I have described so far actually

applies to more or less any rubber small

holding, be it Malay, Chinese or Indian.

Yet, Chinese smallholders, for instance,

are reportedly very different from Malay

smallholders in their economic behaviour.

According to a Malay official of MARDEC

(Malaysian Rubber Development Corpo

ration) in Kuala Pilah, the Chinese, in

comparison to Malay smallholders and

tappers, are generally better caretakers of

the rubber trees and lots, more receptive to

the idea of replanting, more specialized in

tapping regardless of rubber prices, and

more concerned with adjusting the forms of

the rubber product, that is, latex, sheet or

scrap, depending on their respective current

market prices.

There must be many factors to explain

the above difference but let me single out

one factor which partly accounts for the

divergent economIC behaviour between

Malay and Chinese smallholders. Chinese

smallholders more or less entirely depend

on rubber tapping for a living but Malays

do not. Often barred or discouraged from

rice cultivation by government regulations,

Chinese smallholders seldom have had

recourse to any other means of livelihood

than tapping, save perhaps the cultivation

of vegetable gardens. Thus, they are

motivated, no matter whether rubber

prices might be low or high, to maintain the

production capability of rubber trees at

a high level and at the same time to tap as

much latex as possible within a permissible

range. In contrast, Malay smallholders

are motivated to take advantage of high

rubber prices and, at the time of low prices,

to diversify their economic pursuits. In

other words, for Chinese smallholders

rubber is more of a cultivated crop; for

Malays, a forest product.

The economic flexibility of Malay small

holders is their strength as well as their

weakness. Partly helped by the declining

cost of living, it enabled them to survive

even the Great Depression.

When the present writer visited Malaya

in 1946 many smallholders were asked

how they had managed to make a living

during the great depression of the early

thirties when the Singapore price of

rubber at one time declined below 5

Straits cents (1+d.) per lb. The answer

was generally that as the cost of living,

especially the price of rice, had been very

low at that time, it had been possible to

make ends meet, though in some instances

it had been necessary to rely to a greater

extent than before on other activities such

as fishing or hawking, or the production of

rattan to supplement the income from rub

ber. But among smallholders, as distinct

from unemployed or underemployed la

bourers, there was apparently little hard

ship even in 1931-1932. [Bauer 1948: 64]

155

NSSF:NSAR:ARJB:

Yet, this very flexibility keeps them in

a limbo world, neither as peasants nor

agricultural entrepreneurs. Malay small

holders, and probably share-tappers too,

in Negeri Sembilan were seemingly not as

poor as the rice-growing Malay peasants in

Kedah or Kelantan. They occasionally

became rich when rubber prices were high.

Yet they mostly failed to sustain their

wealth whenever rubber prices started to

plunge. Variations of this story are not

altogether unheard-of, even today.

By developing the arguments In this

paper, it was not my intention to propagate

rubber tapping's deterministic influence.

upon Malay economic behaviour. N or was

it my objective to resurrect the colonial

"myth of the lazy native" (concerning

a critical comment on the myth of the lazy

native, see Alatas [1977J). I am well

aware of the argument that Malay economic

behaviour contains selective strategies

adopted by peasants who had to undergo

the transition to a money economy under

colonial rule and whose life was increasingly

subjected to politico-economic changes

beyond their control. However, I maintain

that no matter how one might approach

the economic behaviour of Malay peasants

cum-tappers, there is no denying a close

interconnection between characteristics of

rubber as a crop and as a commodity,

smallholding as an ownership pattern and

as an operational pattern, and tapping as

economic behaviour, which was largely

defined within given socio-political and

historical environments of colonial Malaya.

Significantly this interconnection is still

very real today even after Malaysia's

156

independence. It is this realization which,

in my opinion, has to be borne in mind when

we think of rural development projects in

contemporary Malaysia.

Despite the increasing importance of oil

palm, rubber still cuts a dominant profile

in Malay rural economy and many govern

ment development projects are concentrated

in this sector. The outcome of these

projects is bound to be influenced by what

I called here the "anatomy of Malay

smallholding and rubber tapping." It is

the aim of this paper to demonstrate that

the sociology and social psychology of

rubber, along with its economics, politics

and agronomy, are most helpful in better

understanding and perhaps better planning

the development processes of contemporary

rural Malaysia.

Acknowledgern.ents

The research for this paper comprises part ofa larger research project titled "Socio-EconomicChange and Cultural Transformation in RuralMalaysia." It was carried out between 1987 and1989 under the sponsorship of JSPS (the JapanSociety for the Promotion of Science) and VCC(the Vice Chancellors' Council of NationalUniversities of Malaysia) and funded by the HitachiScholarship Foundation. I would like to expressmy appreciation to Michael Peletz, Shaharil Taliband Wendy Smith for their critical comments on theoriginal manuscript of the paper.

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